NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 29 



And in yet another Protestant country this same mistake was 

 made. In 1868 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it 

 their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so 

 called." Two results followed : upon the great majority of these 

 really self-sacrificing men whose first utterances showed com- 

 plete ignorance of the theories they attacked there came quiet 

 and wide-spread contempt ; upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth 

 and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought scriptural, 

 but which most school-boys knew to be childish, came a burst of 

 good-natured derision from every quarter of the German na- 

 tion.* 



Warfare of this sort against science seems petty indeed ; but 

 it is to be guarded against in Protestant countries not less than in 

 Catholic ; it breaks out in America not less than in Europe. Do 

 conscientious Roman bishops in France labor to keep all advanced 

 scientific instruction under their own control in their own uni- 

 versities and colleges ; so do many not less conscientious Protes- 

 tant clergymen in our own country insist that advanced education 

 in science and literature shall be kept under control in their own 

 sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in their 

 development, and miserably inadequate in their equipment: did 

 a leading Spanish university, until a recent period, exclude pro- 

 fessors holding the Newtonian theory; so have many leading 

 American colleges excluded professors holding the Darwinian 

 theory : have Catholic colleges in Italy rejected excellent candi- 

 dates for professorships on account of " unsafe " views regarding 

 the immaculate conception ; so have Protestant colleges in Amer- 

 ica frequently rejected excellent candidates on account of "un- 

 safe " views regarding the apostolic succession, or the incarnation, 

 or baptism, or the perseverance of the saints. 



And how has all this system resulted? In the older nations, 

 by natural reaction, these colleges, under strict ecclesiastical con- 

 trol, have sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church 

 has ever known of whom Voltaire and Renan and Saint-Beuve 

 are types ; and there are many signs that the same causes are to 

 produce the same results in our own country. 



I might allude to other battle-fields in our own land and time. 

 I might show how, twenty years ago, attempts to meet the want 

 in a great American State of an institution providing higher sci- 

 entific instruction, were met with loud outcries from many excel- 

 lent men, who feared injury thereby to religion ; and how in 

 various other States, at various times since, the same feeling has 

 been shown. Happily, leading men at the centers of Christian 

 thought in many countries are now taking a larger and better 



* See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially Kladderadatsch. 



