EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



SCIENCE, ORTHODOXY, AND RELIGION. 

 TUDGING by a kind of " symposi- 

 *J urn" we saw lately in a San Fran- 

 cisco paper, the clergy of that city, or 

 at least some of them, seem to think it 

 their duty to keep a watchful eye on 

 the utterances of the professors of sci- 

 ence in the neighboring universities, in 

 order that they may raise a voice of 

 warning should anything be said that 

 threatens to conflict with their ideas of 

 theological orthodoxy. As usually hap- 

 pens in such cases, the men who have 

 fallen under the censure of these guard- 

 ians of the truth are two of the bright- 

 est ornaments of the Western scientific 

 world Prof. Joseph Le Conte, of the 

 University of California, and President 

 David Starr Jordan, of Stanford Univer- 

 sity. These eminent scientists had not 

 succeeded in " hitting it off " to the en- 

 tire satisfaction of their clerical critics, 

 and were consequently attacked by the 

 latter with no little acrimony. To off- 

 set this manifestation of narrow-mind- 

 ediiess, however, the Episcopalian 

 Church Club of San Francisco, as we 

 learn, gave a dinner to the incriminated 

 professors, at which liberal, kindly, and 

 rational sentiments were the order of 

 the day. It is to this celebration, if we 

 may so call it, that the discussion which 

 we referred to at the outset relates. 

 Prof. Le Conte, who contributes the first 

 paper, predicts that, when the religious 

 world has succeeded in adjusting itself 

 to the doctrine of evolution, as it has 

 already done to various geological and 

 astronomical theories which it once 

 considered very alarming and heretical, 

 religion will only be the stronger be- 

 cause more rational. Prof. David Starr 

 Jordan makes so bold as to say that 

 * science can not demand anything less 

 than absolute freedom of development; 

 it must be free alike from the need of 



premature decisions and of premature 

 reconciliations." He says, moreover, 

 that whatever be the origin of a doc- 

 trine or opinion, science claims the 

 right to set it aside if it is found to be 

 scientifically false or unsound. He de- 

 clines to accept the dictum that there 

 are three kinds of evolution, theistic, 

 agnostic, and atheistic, and that these 

 must be carefully distinguished. He 

 says there is but one kind of evolution, 

 and that the epithets in question have 

 no application to it, but only to individ- 

 uals. What he means, evidently, is 

 that the only kind of evolution a man 

 of science as such can believe in is that 

 which reveals itself to him as the result 

 of his investigations. Mr. W. T. Stead, 

 editor of the Review of Reviews, says 

 (writing from Chicago, where he was at 

 the time) that " it will take a good 

 many banquets to evolutionists before 

 the Christian Church can adequately 

 acknowledge the debts which it owes 

 to the man (Darwin) and the school 

 which revivified the popular conception 

 of the living God." 



Thus good comes out of evil. The 

 ecclesiastical mind would fain still im- 

 pose fetters upon scientific thought, but 

 whenever it makes any open attempt to 

 do so, it is sure in these days to meet 

 with repulse. If our religious teachers 

 would but believe it, there is an ample 

 field open to them for instructing and 

 benefiting mankind without making 

 any attempts to restrict scientific inves- 

 tigation or the enunciation of scientific 

 doctrines. It is theirs to interpret to 

 their fellow-men in so far as they may 

 be sufficient for the task their deepest 

 relations to the universe in which they 

 live. The hygienist may tell us how to 

 maintain our physical health, the soci- 

 ologist how to govern ourselves as mem- 

 bers of society, the publicist or political 



