74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and may often have very little in common either with true religion 

 or with the Bible. When discussions arise between theology and 

 other sciences, it is only a pity that either side should indulge in what 

 has been termed the odium theolofficum, but which is unfortunately 

 not confined to divines. 



Superstition, considered as the unreasonable fear of natural agen- 

 cies, is a passive rather than an active opponent of science, except 

 when it becomes affected with some cruel panic. But revelation 

 which affirms unity, law, and a Father's hand in Nature, is the deadly 

 foe of superstition ; and, as a matter of fact, no body of people who 

 have been readers of the Bible, and imbued with its spirit, have been 

 found ready to molest or persecute science. Work of this sort has 

 been done chiefly by the ignorant and superstitious votaries of sys- 

 tems which detest the Bible as much as they dislike science. 



Perhaps the most troublesome opposition to science, or rather to 

 the progress of science, has sprung from the tenacity with which men 

 hold to old ideas. These, which may at one time have been the best 

 science attainable, root themselves in the general mind, in popular 

 literature, in learned bodies, and in educational books and institutions. 

 They become identified with men's conceptions both of Nature and 

 religion, and modify their interpretations of the Bible itself. It thus 

 becomes a most difficult matter to wrench them from their hold, and 

 their advocates are too apt to invoke in their defense political, social, 

 and ecclesiastical powers, and to seek to support them by the author- 

 ity of revelation, even when this, rightly understood, might be quite 

 as favorable to the newer views. 



All these conflicts are, however, necessary incidents in human 

 progress, which comes only by conflict ; and there is reason to believe 

 that they would be as severe in the absence of revealed religion as in 

 its presence, were it not that the absence of revelation seems often to 

 produce a fixity and stagnation of thought, unfavorable to any new 

 views, and consequently to some extent to any intellectual conflict. 

 It has been, indeed, to the disinterment of the Bible, the Reforma- 

 tion of the fifteenth century, that the world owes, more than to any 

 other cause, the rapid growth of modern science, and the freedom of 

 discussion which now prevails. The Bible is surely to be regarded as 

 a religious book, and a very old one. Yet, its constant appeal to the 

 individual judgment in matters of religion exposes it quite as often as 

 science to the attacks of ecclesiastical power, and gives to those who 

 rely on it as a rule of faith a mental stimulus which is to this day the 

 strongest guarantee that we jiossess for intellectual liberty in other 

 matters. 



