THE STRUGGLE FOR REALITIES. 



367 



The institutions that survive spring out of man's 

 need for them. The existence of the Church has divine 

 warrant in this. Should every fragment of the historic 

 churches disappear, every memory, every ceremony, 

 every trace of creed or form, the Church would rise 

 again, renewed as to all its essentials ; and with each 

 variant race of man there would be a corresponding 

 variation in the form of the Church. You could not 

 make Buddhists out of the Puritans, nor transplant the 

 New England Sabbath to the sunny isles of Greece. 

 Monarchy, in turn, exists by the same divine right; and 

 when it fails, the same divinity that hedged the king is 

 invoked to sustain the rights of the people. Once the 

 king was God's anointed, as he still is in many lands. 

 But when " God said, ' I am tired of kings ; I suffer them 

 no more,' " the self-rule of the people acquired the same 

 divine right — no less, no more, for the warrant rests in 

 the heart of man. We know God's purposes only by 

 what he lets man do. We know what he wills only by 

 what he permits. That which exists in the nature of 

 things men have worshipped as divine, especially if its 

 relations have been dimly understood. Thus the strug- 

 gle of science with prejudice and tradition has become a 

 warfare with religion ; for men have always sought to 

 strengthen their traditional opinions by giving them a 

 religious sanction. 



The history of the progress of science has been the 



record of the physical resistance of organized society. 



"By the light of burning heretics Christ's 



es.rugge bleeding feet I track." He who sees that 

 against tradition. ° 



the world does move is burned at the 



stake, that other men may be convinced that it does not. 



He who is sure that the rocks were once molten, finds 



the force of social pressure between him and his studies. 



He who would give the sacred books of our civilization 



