842 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment to say ; but what science undoubt- 

 edly has done is to render the tone of 

 mind of the ancient skeptics almost im- 

 possible in the present day. With so 

 vast an amount of truth demonstrated 

 for all practical purposes, so that it 

 daily serves as the basis of action in the 

 present and prediction for tbe future, 

 no one not a born sophist would care 

 to take up the Pyrrhonic parable that 

 knowledge is an impossibility. By in- 

 creasing to so vast an extent the com- 

 pass of human knowledge and revealing 

 the mutual interdependence of phe- 

 nomena, science has made for every one 

 of us an intellectual system vastly sur- 

 passing in solidity anything that was 

 possible for Plato and his contempora- 

 ries. 



We are not concerned, however, to 

 indorse all the expressions used by 

 Prof. Andrews ; what we wish to call 

 attention to is his cordial acceptance of 

 the methods and conclusions of science, 

 and his emphatic assertion that not 

 only does he find nothing therein to 

 impair religious faith, but that, on the 

 contrary, he regards science as render- 

 ing an indispensable assistance to such 

 faith. We have ourselves, on more 

 than one occasion, put on record our 

 belief that the religious instinct in man 

 is an essential part of his nature; so 

 that, closely as it may seem to be con- 

 nected at any time with particular dog- 

 mas, it will not perish if those dogmas 

 should be overthrown, but will appro- 

 priate to itself other intellectual forms 

 that will serve its purpose as well as 

 or better than the old. The article we 

 have been considering is an example 

 and proof of this. The doctrine of 

 evolution has become to Prof. An- 

 drews and to those who think with 

 him and they are many almost a re- 

 ligious symbol. It has certainly become 

 to them a means of expressing religious 

 as well as scientific thought. Religion, 

 after all, is simply the overflow of the 

 human heart toward a transcendent 

 power which reveals itself in us, if not 



at all times, at least in our best and 

 highest moments. We find it nobly 

 exemplified in a passage of the heathen 

 sage Epictetus : " If we had under- 

 standing," he says, " ought we to do 

 anything else both jointly and severally 

 than to sing hymns and bless the Deity, 

 and to tell of his benefits ? Ought we 

 not, when we are digging and plowing 

 and eating, to sing this hymn to God ? 

 ' Great is God, who has given us such 

 implements with which we shall culti- 

 vate the earth ; great is God, who has 

 given us hands, the power of swallow- 

 ing, a stomach, imperceptible growth, 

 and the power of breathing while we 

 sleep.' This is what we ought to sing 

 on every occasion, and to sing the 

 greatest and most divine hymn for giv- 

 ing us the faculty of comprehending 

 these things," Coming down to our 

 own century, the poet Coleridge ex- 

 presses in a iQ'W pregnant words, but 

 from another point of view, the essen- 

 tial nature of religion when he says in 

 one of his translations from Schiller : 



" For the stricken heart of love 

 This visible universe and this common world 

 Is all too narrow." 



In Epictetus we see the overflow of 

 the glad heart, while Coleridge tells us 

 of the overflow of the sorrowful heart. 

 The aspiration and exultation of the 

 one and the yearnings and pleadings of 

 the other meet in the common thought 

 of God. This is religion divorced from 

 dogma, religion which no scientific in- 

 vestigation, no development of knowl- 

 edge, can ever shake or annul. Science 

 henceforth is free to work in its own 

 sphere, by its own methods, and religion 

 is free to comfort, to elevate, and purify 

 human nature by bringing it into contact 

 and relation with the thought of that 

 which is highest and best and most en- 

 during in the universe, with the thought 

 of a Justice that is above human justice, 

 a Love that is above human love, and a 

 Sympatliy that is denied to none. When 

 we think of science and rehgion in this 



