312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



moral side of Christianity. And when fraternity was first put upon 

 the order of the day in 1848, this fact was to some extent recognized. 

 Christianity actually played a certain part in that Revolution. But 

 then followed a restoration of the old alliance between the Church 

 and Government. For twenty years they continued accomplices in 

 reaction. The consequence has been that when Revolution once more 

 raises its head, it is no longer able to see the identity of fraternity and 

 Christianity, nay, absolutely identifies Christianity with the negation 

 of fi'aternity. How far it is possible to falsify an institution was never 

 known to mankind until, in 1871, the Paris workmen assailed with 

 irreconcilable fury the Church of Christ in the name of human brother- 

 hood. 



Thus the political repugnance of the Revolution to theology is in 

 part merely a repugnance to an institution which has falsified the 

 theology of which it is the depositary, and in any case is a repug- 

 nance not to theology as such, but merely to a particular theology. 

 But the Revolution has also, no doubt, a quarrel with theology as a 

 doctrine. " Theology," it says, " even if not exactly opposed to social 

 improvement, is a superstition, and as such allied to ignorance and 

 conservatism. Granting that its precepts are good, it enforces them 

 by legends and fictitious stories which can only influence the unedu- 

 cated ; and, therefore, in order to preserve its influence, it must needs 

 oppose education. Nor are these stories a mere excrescence of the- 

 ology, but theology itself. For theology is neither more nor less 

 than a doctrine of the supernatural. It proclaims a power behind 

 Nature which occasionally interferes with natural laws. It proclaims 

 another world quite different from this in which we live, a world into 

 which what is called the soul is believed to pass at death. It believes, 

 in short, in a number of things which students of Nature know nothing 

 about, and which science puts aside either with respect or with con- 

 tempt." Now, these supernatural doctrines are not merely a part of 

 theology, still less separable from theology, but theology consists ex- 

 clusively of them. Take away the supernatural person, miracles, and 

 tlie spiritual world, you take away theology at the same time, and 

 nothing is left but simple Nature and simple science. Thus theology 

 comes to be used in the sense of supernaturalism, and in this view also 

 excites the hostility of the age. Not merely scientific men themselves, 

 for of these I am not now speaking, but liberals in general, all those 

 who have any tinctui-e of science, all whose minds have in any degree 

 taken the scientific stamp, a vast number already, and, as education 

 spreads, likely to become coextensive with civilized mankind, form 

 a habit of thought with which they are led to consider theology 

 irreconcilable. 



It is a singular coincidence which has combined in apparent op- 

 position to theology the two mightiest forces of the present age. 

 Truly it is not against flesh and blood that Religion has to contend, 



