WHAT IS RELIGION ? 237 



bridegroom had come, the wise entered into power, and 

 the ignorant were cast out. 



The priests fossilize thought. They shut up the 

 kingdom of knowledge against men they neither 

 enter themselves, nor suffer them that are entering in 

 to enter. 1 



When men ask of priests mental bread, they are 

 given a stone ; only empty ritual, vain prayers. 



How true is this kingdom of knowledge as gradually 

 unfolded by science. Nature responds by observation 

 and experiment ; when we speak to Nature we seek 

 and we find, we knock and it is opened unto us, and 

 see the results of knowledge : the blind see, the deaf 

 hear, the lame walk, and disease is being cured, all 

 all, by the patient observations of Nature and the 

 natural laws. 2 



1 "It is a remarkable and interesting fact that the two sides 

 in this conflict, even under all the forms and freedom of modern 

 life where the fullest scope is allowed for every kind of inquiry, 

 still seem to recognise each other intuitively as opponents. Mr. 

 Galton, as the result of his inquiries into the personal and family 

 history of scientific men in England, says that it is a fact that, in 

 proportion to the pains bestowed on their education, sons of clergy- 

 men rarely take the lead in science. The pursuit of science, he 

 considers, must be uncongenial to the priestly character. He says 

 that in his own experience of the councils of scientific societies it is 

 very rare to find clergymen thereon. Out of 6 GO separate appoint- 

 ments clergymen held only sixteen, or one in forty, and these were 

 in nearly every case attached to subdivisions of science with fewest 

 salient points to jar against dogma. English Men of Science, tlieir 

 Nature and Nurture, by F. Galton." (" Social Evolution," Benjamin 

 Kidd, 1895, p. 103.) 



2 " Modern civilization rests upon physical science ; take away 

 her gifts to our own country, and our position among the leading 

 nations of the world is gone to-morrow ; for it is physical science 



