♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Nov. 1, 1885. 



interpretation. We have learned but to understand 

 phenomena, not that which lies in and through and 

 beyond all phenomena. The prayer of our poet has 

 been fulfilled, or rather it has fulfilled itself. Knowledge 

 has grown " from more to more " — and as a necessary 

 consequence, " more of reverence in us dwells." The 

 man of old times stood entranced before the beauty of the 

 world he saw, stood appalled before the mystery which 

 lay veiled beyond that world : even when imagining the 

 power partly revealed to him as Man-like — in purpose, 

 plan, and passions — the child-man "found religion. " How 

 shall the man who sees the grander world disclosed by 

 science, who feels the infinitely greater mystery now 

 veiled beyond the known, who recognises Deity as not 

 measurable or even conceivable by our powers, fail to be 

 moved, n^-y to be far more deeply moved than men 

 were of old, by religious emotion ? 



When science in our times passes farther along the 

 same path the same objections are naturally raised. As 

 men in Moses' time might have pleaded for their more 

 easily understood gods and their more obviously enforced 

 duties ; as they might have urged that the Jehovah of 

 Moses Mras by comparison the merest abstraction, with 

 nothing to appeal directly to their senses and their fears 

 such as the gods of Nature had presented ; so, many 

 imagine now that there is something much more dii-ectly 

 appealing to the emotions, something much more easilj' 

 understood, in some one or other of the multitudinous 

 beliefs adopted bj' various bodies, Christian, Mussulman, 

 or Buddhist, than in the Infinities revealed by Science. 

 "I am not moved by the sense of infinite power and mys- 

 tery," a Mahomedan may say, "but the thought of 

 Allah teaching and leading us through Mahomet is one 

 I can understand and be moved bj-." So another may 

 find in the idea that Faith in some special dogma is 

 what he must cling to as all-saving, a doctrine more 

 simple, and a guide to conduct more trustworthy, he 

 im'gines, than he would have in the recognition of 

 Infinity of Power pure and simple, — in which he finds 

 no other guide to duty than the partly inherited partly 

 acquired conviction (though that conviction permeates 

 the whole being and consciousness of the student of 

 science), that there is a Power outside ourselves making 

 for Righteousness, and that not only the sense of diity 

 but the desire for our own and others' welfare, urges to 

 justice and purity of conduct. 



But — an objector will say — "the sense of awe and 

 wonder experienced, be it admitted, by the man of science 

 has no religious value ; men cannot worship the unknow- 

 able, their conduct cannot be influenced by the conscious- 

 ness that the universe is infinite, its duration eternal, 

 its energies immeasurable, its variety and vitality in- 

 conceivable ; such thoughts cannot bring men nearer 

 together in the bonds of kindly fellowship, cannot 

 strengthen men for life's struggle, cannot enable them 

 better to endure life's troubles and sorrows, — in fine 

 men cannot by the contemplation of the infinite mysteries 

 of the universe be made better or braver, worthier or 

 purer." 



If we try to answer honestly the question how men 

 have been moved or strengthened or purified by religious 

 emotions in past ages, I do not think we shall be led thus 

 to reject as of small religious value or of none, the im- 

 pressions produced by the study and the teachings of 

 modern science. It seems to me that men might with 

 fully as much force, that is with no force at all, have 

 r.iised a similar objection when, for the direct worship of 

 the sun and moon and stars, advanced thinkers strove to 

 substitute the worship of one God, by whom sun, moon. 



and stars were made. "How can religious emotion be 

 raised," an ancient Chaldiean or Egyptian might have 

 urged, " by what I cannot see ? The moon walking in 

 brightness among the fixed stars over which she is queen, 

 the sun glorying as a giant to run his course, the stars 

 (by which he would mean of course the planets, ' as they 

 pursue their wandering course, now high now low then 

 hid, progressive retrograde and standing still ') these are 

 manifest powers, though I may not know how the}- act. 

 These I can worship, these I can propitiate by ofiering 

 them sacrifice, and in presence of these I miist guide my 

 conduct aright, lest they be angry with me and smite me 

 with their unseen arrows. Even if some among us 

 might still be moved by religious emotion, still be strong 

 and brave to endure the sorrows and trials of life, and 

 still be pure in life and conduct, though recognising in 

 the gods of heaven only symbols of a higher power, such 

 as you proclaim, how- shall the ignorant and the weak be 

 strengthened and purified, by such an abstraction as you 

 present ? Beware how j-ou shake men's faith in that 

 which has sci long .strengthened them amidst life's trials, 

 and kept them clear of offence, alike towards those 

 glorious beings whom they worship and towards their 

 fellow men." 



The same objection was probably raised when other 

 systems of specific nature-worship were attacked. It is 

 well known even that idol-worship was defended against 

 those who sought to purify religion from what seems so 

 obviously unreasonable and contemptible. To this day 

 there are countries where the priesthood of the Roman 

 Church are unwilling to teach that statues and pictures 

 are not in themselves fit objects of worship, lest the 

 influence produced by these material objects on the 

 minds of the more ignorant and dull-minded should be 

 lost, and morality should suffer. 



It is because of such considerations as these, because 

 to the great mass of men religious beliefs and practices 

 are necessary which more advanced minds reject, that 

 the religions of to-day, even those which seem purest and 

 best, retain ceremonial observances belonging to times 

 when men worshipped either natural objects, or the 

 powers of nature. Our morning and evening services, 

 our weekly observances, our sacraments, our ceremonies, 

 all come to us from nattu'e-worshipping religions. That 

 doctrine, even, which may be regarded as the very soul 

 of Christianity, the idea of sacrifice, shows itself in the 

 Jewish religion as essentially derived from the practice of 

 sacrificing to the heavenly bodies. Not one of all the 

 sacrificial observances of the Jews, but tells us by its 

 very nature, of its origin as a ceremonial in the worship 

 of sun, and moon, and stars. The Feast of the 

 Passover itself corresponded with the Egyptian Feast 

 of the Sun's Passover, his transit across the equator 

 from the gloomy winter depths into which he had 

 descended, to the glory and power of the summer 

 half of his career. So did the enforced gloom 

 of the Fast of Tabernacles (when not to fast was to 

 incur death by stoning) correspond with the mourning 

 among Sabaistic nations as the sun neared the season 

 of his second passover, his transit acrcss the equator 

 from glory to gloom. 



What men constantly seem to overlook in urging such 

 objections is that they are not needed where they would 

 apply, and that where they are actually applied they 

 have no existence. 



Science certainly teaches a special religion — special in 

 form though general in character. Some have indeed ad- 

 vanced this as an objection against scientific teaching, not 

 because it seemed opposed toreligion but because of its con- 



