EDITOR'S TABLE. 



841 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



WIDENING THOUGHT. 

 "YTTE do not know a more encourag- 

 V V ing sign of the times than the 

 vastly improved entente now existing 

 between those two forces, which only a 

 generation ago seemed to many to be 

 irreconcilable enemies science and re- 

 ligion. There were not wanting, at the 

 time we speak of, wdse men who as- 

 serted that the conflict between these 

 two must be the result of misunder- 

 standing ; but, in general, the partisans 

 of religion were convinced that any 

 science, so called, which threatened 

 their special beliefs must be absolutely 

 false, while some at least of the par- 

 tisans of science were disposed to hold 

 that, because some specific theological 

 tenets had been proved unsound, the 

 whole basis of religion had been shat- 

 tered and destroyed. Of course, rem- 

 nants of these errors may be found lin- 

 gering here and there even now ; but 

 in centers of thought and culture very 

 d liferent ideas have begun to prevail. 

 We noticed some time ago, in another 

 department of the Monthly, an excellent 

 work by the esteemed President of Roch- 

 ester (Jniversity Genetic Philosophy 

 which was thoroughly in line with all 

 that is best in the modern scientific 

 spirit; yet Rochester University, if we 

 mistake not, is an institution under the 

 control of the Baptist denomination. 

 More lately still we called attention to 

 the liberal and hopeful utterances of the 

 Presbyterian clergymen who were cele- 

 brating the jubilee of Knox College at 

 Toronto, Canada. We now find an ad- 

 mirable article in the December number 

 of The New World, bearing the title 

 Science a Natural Ally of Religion, 

 which again we may credit to the Bap- 

 tist denomination, as it proceeds from 

 the pen of Prof. E. Benjamin Andrews, 

 of Brown University, Rhode Island. 



According to Prof. Andrews, who 

 states his case very well, it has come to 

 this, that science, which bigots and fa- 

 natics on one side or the other once ac- 

 counted the natural foe of religion, can 

 and must now be claimed as its natural 

 ally. Science, Prof. Andrews tells us, 

 has done the work of religion in unify- 

 ing human knowledge, and thus leading 

 our thought by necessary stages to the 

 recognition of one First Cause of all 

 things. We have been led to see that 

 there are not forces in the world that 

 there is but ohq force ; and we have been 

 set free from the crude materialism 

 which unintelligently deified matter as 

 the one self-existent reality. The doc- 

 trine of evolution, far from being an 

 impediment to religious faith, " opens 

 the way for an apprehension of the Di- 

 vine Being and his modes of procedure 

 far more rational, helpful, and uplifting 

 than the time-honored creationist view." 

 Or, as he otherwise expresses it, we see 

 in evolution " simply the slow march of 

 creative energy." The old idea repre- 

 sented the Deity as forming a plan, just 

 as an architect might design a house, 

 and then, when all the details had been 

 worked out, proceeding to realize it. 

 According to the evolutionist view, '' we 

 can not think of the Divine Being as 

 ever having been without a world. He 

 creates from all eternity, and the prod- 

 uct each instant is a brand-new work 

 entire, which, though God's creature, is 

 yet not external to him, but rather the 

 sign of Ms own living, throbbing pres- 

 ence." 



Science, Prof. Andrews further 

 claims, has rendered philosophic skepti- 

 cism henceforth impossible such skep- 

 ticism, for example, as that of Pyrrho 

 of Elis and the later Academics. How 

 far this is true, as a matter of exact 

 logic, we are not prepared at this mo- 



