44: UNIVERSITIES VS. SCIENCE. 



As long as the contest was over the Old Testament account of 

 the Creations, it would not seem to matter much whether the 

 Church gained or lost in the controversy ; for the truth of the 

 Christian religion is not necessarily dependent upon either the 

 cosmogony or the theocracy of Moses. The religion of the New 

 Testament was a great and radical reform of the straight and 

 highly anthropomorphic monotheism of the Hebrews. After 

 this great Reformation was once established, it was no more im- 

 portant to it that the writings of the Mosaic priesthood should 

 be retained, than it was to the reformed Protestantism of the 

 sixteenth century that the bulls and encyclicals of the Popes 

 should be longer regarded. In fact it is very much of a question 

 whether the Christian cause has not lost rather than gained by 

 incorporating the books of Jewish Mythology and Ritual among 

 its sacred Scriptures. 



In the first place the New Religion gave up at once the very 

 primitive and human conception of God which was held by the 

 Hebrews, as one coming down and talking with men, doing 

 their battles and making laws for them, as one contesting his 

 place with the gods of other nations, and governed by like passions 

 as we ourselves. Again, the Christian religion first brought out 

 the doctrine of future rewards and punishment, and the great 

 theological tenet of the immortality of the soul. St. Paul says, 

 " Christ came to bring life arid immortality to light." Surely 

 this is an entirely different religion from the Unitarian theocracy 

 of the Jews ; and we cannot see how its eternal truth can be 

 affected one w r ay or another, though the beautiful verses of Gen- 

 esis be shown to be figurative or fabulous, though neither the 

 earth nor the sun is the center of the universe, though the world 

 was created neither in six days nor in any periods whatever, 

 and though neither Adam nor any portion of the human race 

 was ever started off at once in the full tide of civilization and 

 enlightenment. 



But science does not stop when it would seem to have worsted 

 the Hydra of ancient fable. It is every day putting forward 

 bolder and more far-reaching claims, and it is now perhaps be- 

 coming a serious and important question whether some of the 



