AN APOLOGY FOR THE CHURCH S PERSECUTION OF SCIENCE 1 77 



strating even its own conclusions. The conclusions of philosophy 

 notoriously lack finality. The accepted philosophy of today is 

 revised or rejected tomorrow. For the outcome of philosophical inves- 

 tigation is a conception: and conceptions, as we have seen, are fleeting 

 things. Philosophy, therefore, can furnish no secure premises for 

 demonstrating anything. To build a faith upon it would be to build 

 upon the shifting sand. The church must seek a more secure founda- 

 tion for her faith than philosophy can ever furnish her. She must 

 have found some more secure foundation; for her conviction is a more 

 deeply rooted conviction than philosophical reasoning could ever 

 plant. Finally, the Christian faith is clearly not a product of philoso- 

 phy, for the reason that it is not a body of conceptions. It is a 

 body of working hypotheses which are ever being reconceived. 



Two other grounds which have often been assigned as the grounds 

 of Christian conviction must be briefly dismissed. The argument from 

 revelation we have already seen to be no vahd argument, for it in a 

 large part begs the question. The argument from history for the most 

 part also involves a petitio principii. To demonstrate the reality of 

 the future Ufe by reference to the resurrection of Christ, for example, 

 is to be guilty of a petitio principii. For the major premise of all his- 

 torical investigation is that the impossible never happened. Unless 

 there be a Ufe beyond the grave Jesus never rose. The records of his 

 resurrection are incredible. Either the disciples never saw him, as the 

 records say they did, or they were victims of a hallucination. The 

 records on which this argument for a future life are based are credible 

 only if that which they are used to prove is assumed. 



The real ground of the Christian's confidence in the truth of the 

 working hypotheses on which his Ufe is based is that those working 

 hypotheses always furnish a reUable basis for Ufe. In that respect 

 at least they are like any working hypothesis of science. They 

 can always be depended upon to "work." Those, for example, who 

 accept the doctrine of the ascension are always armed against temp- 

 tation and disappointment, impelled to seek goodness, and eschew 

 evil; and when goodness fails and evil triumphs and no visible ground 

 for hope appears, they can recall that he who was better than they can 



