THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 567 



have sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church has 

 ever known of whom Voltaire and Renan and St. Beuve are types ; 

 and there are many signs that the same causes are producing the same 

 result in our own country. 



I might allude to anotlier battle-field in our own land and time. 

 I might show how an attempt to meet the great want, in the State 

 of New York, of an institution providing scientific instruction, has 

 been met with loud outcries from many excellent men, who fear injury 

 thereby to religion. I might picture to you the strategy which has 

 been used to keep earnest young men from an institution, which, it is 

 declared, cannot be Christian because it is not sectarian. I might lay 

 before you wonderful lines of argument which have been made, to 

 show the dangerous tendencies of a plan which gives to scientific 

 studies the same weight as to classical studies, and which lays no less 

 stress on modern history and literature than on ancient history and 

 literature. 



I might show how it has been denounced by the friends and agents 

 of denominational colleges and in many sectarian journals, how the 

 most preposterous charges have been made and believed by good 

 men, how the epithets of " godless," " infidel," " irreligious," " un- 

 religious," " atheistic," have been hurled against a body of Christian 

 trustees, professors, and students, and with little practical result save 

 arousing a suspicion in the minds of large bodies of thoughtful young 

 men, that the churches dread scientific studies untrammeled by sec- 

 tarianism. 



You have now gone over the greater struggles in the long war 

 between Ecclesiasticism and Science, and have glanced at the lesser 

 fields. You have seen the conflicts in Physical Geography, as to the 

 form of the earth ; in Astronomy, as to the place of the earth in the 

 universe; in Chemistry and Physics; in Anatomy and Medicine; in 

 Geology; in Meteorology: in Cartography; in the Industrial and 

 Agricultural Sciences ; in Political Economy and Social Science ; and 

 in Scientific Instruction. 



In every case, whether the war has been long or short, forcible 

 or feeble, you have seen this same result-^Science has at last gained 

 the victory. 



In every case too, you have seen that while this ecclesiastical 

 war, during its continuance, has tended to drive multitudes of 

 thoughtful men away from religion, the triumph of science has been 

 a blessing to religion ennobling its conceptions and bettering its 

 methods. 



May we 'not, then, hope that the greatest and best men in the 

 Church, the men standing at centres of thought, will insist with pow- 

 er, more and more, that religion be no longer tied to so injurious a 

 policy as that which this warfare reveals ; that searchers for truth, 

 whether in theology or natural science, work on as friends, sure that, 



