i 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that the kingdom of heaven is not & place, but a state of mind. Hence, 

 coming to Christ is coming to our truer, better selves, and conforming 

 our lives to the highest ideal. Was not Paul a savior of mankind 

 also ? Without Paul it is probable that Christianity would have cut 

 but an insignificant figure in this world. He was its thunderbolt ; his 

 words still tingle in our ears. 



I by no means say that this is the only view that can be taken of 

 Christ as the Saviour of mankind ; I say it is the only view science 

 or reason can take — the only view which is in harmony with the rest 

 of our knowledge of the world. 



What can science, or, if you please, the human reason, in its quest 

 of exact knowledge, make of the cardinal dogmas of the Christian 

 Church — the plan of salvation, justification, the Trinity, or "saving 

 grace," etc. ? Simply nothing. These things were to the Jews a stum- 

 bling-block and to the Greeks foolishness, and to the man of science 

 they are like an utterance in an unknown tongue. He has no means 

 of verifying them ; they lie in a region entirely beyond his ken. 



Witness the efforts of the Andover professors, in their latest mani- 

 festo, " Progressive Orthodoxy," to give a basis of reason to the dogma 

 of vicarious atonement. The result is mere verbal jugglery. To say 

 that Christ, laying down his life, makes you or me, or any man, ca- 

 pable of repenting in a way or in a degree we were not capable of 

 before, or that a man's capacity in any direction can be increased 

 without effort on his part, and by an event of which he may never 

 have heard, are assertions not credible, because they break completely 

 with the whole system of natural knowledge. 



In short, the truth of this whole controversy between science and 

 theology seems to me to be this : If we take science as our sole guide, 

 if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old the- 

 ology, with all its miraculous machinery, must go. But if there is a 

 higher principle by which we are to be guided in religious matters, if 

 there is an eye of faith which is superior to the eye of reason — a propo- 

 sition which I for one neither affirm nor deny — then the whole aspect 

 of the question is changed, and it is science and not theology that is 

 blocking the way. 



But the attitude of Professor Drummond is, that there is nothing 

 true in divinity that is not true in science, or at least in harmony with 

 science, and the main purpose of his book is to demonstrate this fact. 



The proof here offered is nothing more than the old argument from 

 analogy, the analogy being drawn from the principles of biology 

 instead of from the general course of nature, as with Butler. It is the 

 assumption that these biological processes or laws are identical in the 

 spiritual and physical spheres that furnishes the starting-point of the 

 book. "The position we have been led to take up is not that the spir- 

 itual laws are analogous to the natural laws, but that they are the same 

 laws. It is not a question of analogy, but of identity.'''' Still, the 





