No. 3.] AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. ^^^ r j 



Teligion side by side, talking of reconciling science and religion, 

 as if they had ever been unreconciled.. Scientists and theologians 

 may have quarreled, but never science and religion. At dinners 

 they are toasted in the same breath, and calls made on clergymen 

 to respond, who, for fear of giving offense, or lacking the fire and 

 firmness of St. Paul, utter a vast amount of platitudes about the 

 beauty of science and the truth of religion, trembling in their 

 shoes all the time, fearing that science falsely so-called may take 

 away their professional calling, instead of uttering in a voice of 

 -thunder, like the Boanerges of the gospel, that " the world by 

 wisdom knew not God." And it never will. Our religion is 

 made so plain by the light of faith that the wayfaring man, 

 though a fool, cannot err therein. 



No, gentlemen ; I firmly believe that there is less connection 

 between science and religion than there is between jurisprudence 

 and astronom}', and the sooner this is understood the better it 

 will be for both, lleligion is based upon revelations as given to 

 us in a book, the contents of wliich are never changed, and of 

 which there have been no revised or corrected editions since it 

 was first given, except so far as man has interpolated ; a book 

 more or less perfectly understood by mankind, but clear and un- 

 equivocal in all essential points concerning the relation of man 

 to his Creator ; a book that affords practical directions, but no 

 theory ; a book of facts and not of arguments ; a book that has 

 been damaged more by theologians than by all the Pantheists 

 and Atheists that have ever lived and turned their invectives 

 against it — and no one source of mischief on the part of theolo- 

 gians is greater than that of admitting the profound mystery of 

 many parts of it, and almost in the next breath attempting some 

 sort of explanation of these mysteries. The book is just what 

 Richard Whatley says it is, viz.: "Not the philosophy of the 

 human mind, nor yet the philosophy of the divine nature in itself, 

 but, (that which is properly religion) the relation and connection 

 of the two beings — what God is to us, what He has done and will 

 do for us, and what we are to be in regard to Him." ^ ^ ^ 

 Let us stick to science, pure, unadulterated science, and leave to 

 religion things which pertain to it; for science and religion are 

 like two mighty rivers flowing toward the same ocean, and before 

 reaching it they will meet and mingle their pure streams, and 

 ^ow t02;ether into that vast ocean of truth which encircles the 

 sthrone of the great Author of all truth, whether pertaining to 



