SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 447 



aqueduct without water, and there be water without an aqueduct. 

 God makes water, and men make aqueducts. Water was before aque- 

 ducts, and religion before churches. God makes religion, and men 

 make churches. There are irreligious men in every cliurch, and there 

 are very religious men in no church. Any visible, organized church 

 is a mere human institution. It is useful for the purpose of propagat- 

 ing religion so long as it confines itself to that function and abstains 

 from all other things. The moment it transcends that limit, it is an 

 injurious institution. In either case it is merely human, and we 

 wrono; both relioion and the Church when we claim for the latter that 

 it is not a human institution. The Church of England is as much a 

 human institution as the Royal Society ; and the same may be said of 

 the Church of Rome and the Royal Florentine Academy. A church 

 is as much an authority in matters of religion as a society is in mat- 

 ters of science, and no more. " The Church " has often been ojtposed 

 to science, and so it has to religion ; but " the society " has often 

 been ojtposed to i-eligion, and so it has to science. " The Church," 

 both before and since the days of Christ, has stood in opposition to 

 the Bible, the text-book of Jewish and Christian religionists, quite as 

 often as it has to science. But " the society," or " the academy," has 

 stood in opposition to science quite as often as it has to religion. 

 Sometimes the sin of one has been laid upon tlie other, and sometimes 

 the property of one has been scheduled as the assets of the other. It 

 is time to protest, in the interests of the truth of God, and in the 

 name of the God of truth, that religion no longer be saddled with 

 all the faults of the churchmen, all the follies of the scientists, and 

 all the crimes of the politicians. It w'as not religion which brought 

 Galileo to his humiliating retraction, about which we hear so much 

 declamation ; it was " the Church." 



But why should writers of tlie history of science so frequently 

 conceal the fact that " the Church " was instigated thereunto not by 

 religious people, but scientific men by Galileo's collahoratcurs ? It 

 was the jealousy of the scientists which made use of the bigotry of 

 the churchmen to degrade a rival in science. They began their at- 

 tacks not on the ground that religion was in danger, but on such sci- 

 entific grounds as these, stated by a professor in the University of 

 Padua namely, that as there were only seven metals, and seven days 

 in the week, and seven apertures in man's head, there could be only 

 seven planets ! And that was some time before these gentlemen of 

 science had instigated the sarcastic Dominican monk to attempt to 

 preach Galileo down under the text, Viri Galiloei, quid statis adspi- 

 cientes hi ccelum f 



In like manner, politicians have used '* the Church " to overthrow 

 their rivals. " The Church " is the enHne which has been turned 

 against freedom, against science, against religion. It would be as 

 logical and as fair to lay all " the Church's " outrages against human 



