EDITOR'S TABLE. 



231 



tions that have been raised, and that are 

 80 easy to raise, against a "work of this 

 character. Bat one criticism, particu- 

 larly, deserves attention, because it lies 

 against the whole reason and purpose 

 of the book, and has been made on all 

 sides ; in fact, it forms the only unani- 

 mous basis of attack on the part of Dr. 

 Draper's assailants. It is said that his 

 work is a fiction, and represents no 

 reality ; that his subject is an illusion, 

 his title a misnomer, and his book a 

 mere figment of the imagination. He 

 professes, it is said, to write a " History 

 of the Conflict between Religion and Sci- 

 ence," when there is not, and never has 

 been, any such real conflict, and there- 

 fore no possibility of its history. The or- 

 gans of all the orthodox denominations 

 are in emphatic accord upon this point, 

 and even the outside sects Jews, Unita- 

 rians, and Catholics, whom the orthodox 

 repudiate as beyond the pale of Chris- 

 tianity, as knowing nothing of true re- 

 ligion take precisely the same ground 

 in regard to Dr. Draper's work. The 

 Jewish Times, for example, says : " Is 

 there really a conflict between science 

 and religion? We answer emphatical- 

 ly, no ! There is no such conflict ! 

 there can be no such conflict!" Dr. 

 Thomas Hill, in the Unitarian Review, 

 says of Draper's book, that " so far 

 from giving us a history of the conflict 

 between science and religion, it gives 

 us nothing to show that such a conflict 

 ever existed ;" and Dr. Brownson, at 

 the Roman Catholic extreme, declares 

 of our author's volume, " He professes 

 to give in it the history of the conflict 

 between religion and science, or of a 

 conflict that has never occurred, and 

 never can occur." There is, at all 

 events, little conflict here, but an har- 

 monious strain of denial of the legiti- 

 macy of Dr. Draper's subject, aU along 

 the line, and which reaches even to the 

 dubious borders of that which is recog- 

 nized as no religion at all. 



What, now, are we to make of 

 this ? It can hardly be that these di- 



verse parties have solemnly conspired 

 to perpetrate a huge joke; and we can 

 only suppose that they are serious at 

 the expense of their intelligence. Re- 

 ligion and science have certainly co- 

 existed in the world for a long time, 

 and they have both figured pretty 

 largely in human thought and human 

 affairs. They must have had some re- 

 lations with each other, and these rela- 

 tions must have had a definite charac- 

 ter. If they have not been in conflict, 

 then they have been out of conflict, or 

 in harmony. Those who deny the an- 

 tagonism must affirm the opposite, or 

 that the relations of religion and science 

 are, and always have been, those of 

 concord and harmony. But, if this be 

 so, let it be understood that Dr. Dra- 

 per's work is not the only one that is 

 discredited. What means the multitude 

 of books that have been written pro- 

 fessedly to bring these subjects into 

 harmony? There is a vast body of 

 theological literature, going back for 

 centuries, that is devoted to the work 

 of reconciling religion and science. 

 Whole hbraries of such literature have 

 been consecrated to the harmonization 

 of separate and special phases of that 

 relation. Generation after generation 

 have spent a large part of their theo- 

 logical force in reconciling Christian 

 doctrine which has been held as re- 

 ligion, with astronomical, geological, 

 biological, and ethnological science. 

 If Dr. Draper is a romancer, then all 

 this must also go to the account of ro- 

 mance. If there has been no conflict, 

 then there could be no reconciliation, 

 for the attempt to reconcile that which 

 is already harmonious is absurd. If 

 it be said that our ignorant prede- 

 cessors may have fancied a hostility 

 which we now know to be unreal, the 

 reply is, that the work of reconciliation 

 was never so rife as to-day. We could 

 run The Populae Science Monthly 

 alone on the papers we receive from 

 the theological side, aiming to harmo- 

 nize present religious thought with the 



