SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 317 



the entire kingdom of organic nature, so much the 

 more strenuously has the Christian religion, in asso- 

 ciation with dualistic nietaplrysics, striven to deny the 

 application of these natural laws in the province of 

 the so-called " spiritual life " — that is, in one section 

 of the physiology of the brain. 



No one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably 

 enunciated this open and irreconcileable opposition 

 between the modern scientific and the outworn Chris- 

 tian view than David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest 

 theologian of the nineteenth century. His last work, 

 The Old Faith and the New, is a magnificent expres- 

 sion of the honest conviction of all educated people of 

 the present day who understand this unavoidable 

 conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines 

 of Christianity and the illuminating, rational revela- 

 tion of modern science — all those who have the 

 courage to defend the right of reason against the 

 pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of 

 the philosophic demand for a unified system of 

 thought. Strauss, as an honourable and courageous 

 free-thinker, has expounded far better than I could 

 the principal points of difference between " the old 

 and the new faith." The absolute irreconcileability 

 of the opponents and the inevitability of their struggle 

 (" for life or death ") have been ably presented on the 

 philosophic side by E. Hartmann, in his interesting 

 work on The Self-Destr action of Christianity. 



When the works of Strauss and Feuerbach and 

 The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science 

 of J. W. Draper have been read, it may seem super- 

 fluous for us to devote a special chapter to the subject. 

 Yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our 

 purpose, to cast a critical glance at the historical 



