HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 309 



prodigioritm. It does not believe that Nature is benevolent, and yet 

 it has all the confidence of Mohammedans or Crusaders. This is be- 

 cause it believes it understands the laws of Nature, and knows how 

 to deal so that Nature shall favor its operations. Not by the Sibyl- 

 line books, but by experiment ; not by suj^plications, but by scientific 

 precautions and operations, it discovers and pi'opitiates the mind of 

 its Deity. 



But by the side of this scientific theology decrying theology there 

 is also a popular outcry against theology. The Revolution in Europe 

 delights in declaring itself atheistic. The meaning of this in the main 

 is, that it wishes to express in the tersest possible way its hatred of 

 the reigning theology. But with this feeling there is no doubt a mixt- 

 ure of that real atheism I have described above under the name of 

 willfulness. These revolutionists have so little conception of the great- 

 ness of the powers which determine the order of things, that they im- 

 agine they have only to make up their minds and to exjjress their reso- 

 lution with suflicient vehemence and to fling away their lives with suffi- 

 cient recklessness, and human society will in a short time assume just 

 the shape they wish. They think, in short, that they themselves are 

 very great, and that Nature is very little. Still, it is evident enough 

 that their hatred against the reigning theology is not a merely capri- 

 cious feeling. It is no wild, egotistic grudge against whatever is pow- 

 erful, however this feeling may occasionally blend with it. It is a 

 serious, persistent, deep-rooted aversion. But it by no means follows 

 that the reigniug system excites their hatred purely as a theology, 

 even though they themselves believe so. In their furious invectives 

 against God, nothing is moi-e evident than that they are thinking of a 

 special conception of God, and, though they themselves do not profess 

 to substitute any other conception, it is very possible they are uncon- 

 sciously doing so. At any rate, the mere fact that these men are 

 nominally atheists proves no more than is proved by the same name 

 having been commonly bestowed upon the first Christians. 



What, then, are the grounds of the irreconcilable repugnance of the 

 Revolution for theology ? Nothing is more easy than to distinguish 

 and enumerate the principal ones. First may be ranked the political 

 ground, that is, the intimate connection in which they find theology 

 standing to the political system they are laboring to overthrow. 

 Twice in modern Europe it has been possible to discern the inter- 

 dependence of the reigning political with the reigning theological 

 system. Modern history is filled with two great movements, the 

 Reformation and the Revolution. The first was an attempt to purify 

 religion, the second an attempt to reform government and society. 

 In both cases the principal obstacle to the movement was found in 

 the coalition of the Church and Government. The decided reaction 

 against the Reformation which marks the second half of the sixteenth 

 century, and which ended in restoring the mediaeval form of Chris- 



