362 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF 



prayer iuflueuce them ; they require to share the crops or the booty of 

 their worshipers. 



Thus, then, every increase in science — that is, in positive and ascer 

 tained knowledge — brings with it an elevation of religion. 



Nor is this progress coutiued to the lower races. Even within the last 

 century, science has pariiied the religion of Western Europe by rooting 

 out the dark belief in witchcraft, which led to thousands of executions, 

 and hung like a black pall over the Christianity of the Middle Ages. 



Yet, in spite of these immense services wdiich science has confessedly 

 rendered to the cause of religion, there are still many who look on it as 

 hostile to religious truth, forgetting that science is but exact knowledge, 

 and that he who regards it as incompatible with hrs religion, practically 

 admits that his religion is uutenable. 



Others, again, maintain that although science or religion cannot indeed 

 be at variance, yet that the teaching of scientific men, or rr.ther of some 

 scientific men, is in open hostility with religion. 



What justification is there, however, for this idea ? No scientific man, 

 so far as I know, has ever been sui^posed to have taught anything which 

 he did not himself believe. That surely was their right — nay, their duty ; 

 their duty alike to themselves, to you, for their devotion to truth is 

 their best claim to j'our confidence— nay, to religion also, for nothing 

 could be more fatal to religion than that it should be supposed to require 

 the suppression of truth. 



No, the true spirit of faith looks on the progress of science, not with 

 fear but with hope, knowing- that science can influence our religious con- 

 ceptions for good only. 



Whether, then, as some suppose, science is destined profoundly to 

 modify our present religious views, or not — into which question I do 

 not now wish to enter — no one need on that account regard it with appre- 

 hension or with distrust. 



Far from it, we must be prepared to accept any conclusions to which 

 the evidence may lead ; not in the spirit of resignation or of despair, but 

 in the sure and certain hope that every discovery of science, even if it 

 may conflict with our present opinions, and Avith convictions we hold 

 dear, will open out to us more and more the majestic grandeur of the 

 universe in which we live, and thus eiuible us to form nobler and there- 

 fore truer conceptions of religious truth. 



The time, then, has surely now come, when scientific men need no 

 longer stand on the defensive, but may call on the state, which is now 

 making a great effort to establish a national system of education, and 

 has ever shown itself ready to assist in the prosecution of scientific 

 research — may call on the clergy, who exercise so great an influence — 

 no longer to ignore in our elementary and other schools the great dis- 

 coveries of the last thousand years, but to assist us in making them 

 more generally known to the people of this country ; confident that a 

 better acquaintance with the laws which regulate the beautiful world 

 in which we live would not only diminish the evils from which we suf- 

 fer, and add greatly to the general happiness, but also tend to develop 

 our moral nature — to elevate and purify the whole character of man. 



