444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



science and real religion. If any man shall charge me with being an 

 infidel as touching geometry, and try to turn me out of the church of 

 science, I shall become liotly indignant, because I know that Euclid 

 did not believe more in geometry than I do, and I believe as much in 

 the teachings of geometry as I do in the teachings of theology, 

 regarding them both, as Aristotle did, as mere human sciences, rank- 

 ing theology with psychology, geology, and botany. And, being by 

 profession a theologian, I certainly believe in theology. 



And this brings us back to what was stated in the beginning, as 

 one of the causes of this cry of "conflict," It is the confounding of 

 theology with religion. Theology is not religion any more than psy- 

 chology is human life, or zoology is animal life, or botany is vege- 

 table life. Theology is objective ; religion is subjective. Theology is 

 the scientific classification of what is known of God ; religion is a 

 loving obedience to God's commandments. Every religious man 

 must have some theology, but it does not follow that every theologian 

 must have some relioion. We never knew a religious man without 

 some kind of a theology, nor can we conceive such a case. But we 

 do know some theologians who have little religion, and some that 

 seem to have none. There may be a conflict between theology and 

 some other sciences, and religious men may deplore that conflict, or 

 may not, according to their measure of faith. There are those whose 

 faith is so large and strong that they do not deplore such a con- 

 flict, because they know that if, for instance, a conflict should come 

 between geology and theology, and geology should be beaten, it will 

 be so much the better for religion ; and if geology should beat the- 

 ology, still so much the better for religion : according to the spirit of 

 the old Arabic adage. If the pitcher fall on the stofie, so much the 

 worse for the pitcher^' and if the stone fall on the pitcher so much the 

 worse for the pitcher. Geologists, psychologists, and theologists, 

 must all ultimately promote the cause of religion, because they must 

 confirm one another's truths, and explode one another's errors ; and a 

 religious man is a man whose soul longs for the truth, who loves 

 truth because he loves God, who knows if the soul be sanctified it 

 must be sanctified by the truth, even as the mind must be enlarged 

 and strengthened by the truth. He knows and feels that it would be 

 as irreligious in him to reject any truth found in Natui-e, as it would 

 be for another to reject any truth found in the Bible. 



But there is no necessary conflict between even theology and any 

 other science. Theology has to deal with problems into which the 

 element of the infinite enters. It will therefore have concepts some 

 two of which will be irreconcilable, but not therefore contradictory. 

 For instance, to say that God is " an infinite person " is to state the 

 agreement of two concepts which the human mind is supposed never 

 to have reconciled, and never to be able to reconcile. But they are 



