SCIENTIFIC FAITH 



it enhances the value or significance of everything 

 about us that we are wont to treat as cheap or vul- 

 gar, and it discounts the value of the things far off 

 upon which we have laid such stress. It ties us to the 

 earth, it calls in the messengers we send forth into 

 the unknown; it makes the astonishing revelation — 

 revolutionary revelation, I may say — that the 

 earth is embosomed in the infinite heavens the same 

 as the stars that shine above us, that the creative 

 energy is working now and here underfoot, the same 

 as in the ages of myth and miracle; in other words, 

 that God is really immanent in his universe, and in- 

 separable from it; that we have been in heaven and 

 under the celestial laws all our lives, and knew it not. 

 Science thus kills religion, poetry, and romance only 

 so far as it dispels our illusion^ and brings us back 

 from the imaginary to the common and the near at 

 hand. It discounts heaven in favor of earth. It 

 should make us more at home in the world,* and 

 more conscious of the daily beauty and wonders that 

 surround us, and, if it does not, the trouble is proba- 

 bly in the ages of myth and fable that lie behind us 

 and that have left their intoxicating influence in our 

 blood. 



We are willing to be made out of the dust of the 

 earth when God makes us, the God we have made 

 ourselves out of our dreams and fears and aspira- 

 tions, but we are not willing to be made out of the 

 dust of the earth when the god called Evolution 



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