Mabch 3, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



243 



the right of agnostics and atheists to use the 

 public school as a foiaim for the teaching ot 

 their doctrines. 



The Bible has in many places been excluded 

 from the schools on the ground that religion 

 should not be taught by those paid by public 

 taxation. If this doctrine is sound, what right 

 have the enemies of religion to teach irreligion 

 in the public schools? If the Bible cannot be 

 taught, -why should Christian taxpayers permit 

 the teaching of guesses that make the Bible a 

 lie? A teacher might just as well write over 

 the door of his room, "Leave Christianity be- 

 hind you, all ye who enter here," as to ask his 

 students to accept an hypothesis directly and 

 irreconcilably antagonistic to the Bible. 



Our opponents are not fair. When we find 

 fault with the teaching of Darwin's unsup- 

 ported hypothesis, they talk about Copernius 

 and Galileo and ask whether we shall exclude 

 science and return to the dark ages. Their 

 evasion is a confession of weakness. We do 

 not ask for the exclusion of anj' scientific truth, 

 but we do protest against an atheist teacher 

 being allowed to blow his guesses in the face of 

 the student. The Christians who want to teach 

 religion in their schools furnish the money for 

 denominational institutions. If atheists want 

 to teach atheism, why do they not bviild theii' 

 own schools and employ their own teachers? 

 If a man really believes that he has brute blood 

 in him, he can teach that to his children at 

 home or he can send them to atheistic schools, 

 Avhere his children will not be in danger of 

 losing their brute philosophy, but why should 

 he be allowed to deal with other people's chil- 

 dren as if they Avere little monkeys? 



We stamp upon our coins "In God We 

 Trust"; we administer to witnesses an oath in 

 which God's name appears ; our President takes 

 his oath of office upon the Bible. Is it fanatical 

 to suggest that public taxes should not be em- 

 ployed for the purpose of undermining the 

 nation's God? When we defend the Mosaic 

 account of man's creation and contend that 

 man has no brute blood in him, but was made 

 in God's image by separate act and placed on 

 earth to carry out a divine decree, we are de- 

 fending the God of the Jews as well as the 

 God of the Gentiles; the God of the Catholics 



as well as the God of the Protestants. We 

 believe that faitli in a Supreme Being is essen- 

 tial to civilization as well as to religion and 

 that abandonment of God means ruin to the 

 world and chaos to society. 



Let these believers in "the tree man" come 

 down out of the trees and meet the issue. Let 

 them defend the teaching of agnosticism o- 

 atheism if they dare. If they deny that the 

 natural tendency of Darwinism is to lead man . 

 to a denial of God, let them frankly point out 

 the portions of the Bible which they regard as 

 consistent with Darwinism, or evolution ap- 

 plied to man. They weaken faith in God, dis- 

 courage prayer, raise doubt as to a future life, 

 reduce Christ to the stature of a man, and make 

 the Bible a "scrap of paper." As religion is 

 the only basis of morals, it is time for Chris- 

 tians to protect religion from its most insidious 

 enemy. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



James Hall of Albany, Geologist and Paleeon- 



tologist. 1811-1898. By John M. Clarke. 



Pp. 565, illustrated. Albany, 1921 (S. C. 



Bishop, $3.70, net). 



In this Ijook we have a very informative and 

 highly entertaining history, not only of Pro- 

 fessor James Hall, but of most of the other 

 pioneers in American geology and paleon- 

 tology as well. It is replete with interest for 

 all men of science. 



Hall was an extraordinary man in many 

 ways, turning out a prodigious amount of 

 geologic work, and furnishing, by his dyna- 

 mism, an inestimable "creative impulse to study 

 and research." He was sensitive to a remark- 

 able degree, irascible, and with a surpassing 

 ambition. His nervous system always taut, he 

 "played on a harp of a thousand strings." In 

 consequence he appears to have been in trouble 

 with most of his associates, and yet he was "a 

 confiding man, forever trusting the plausible 

 stranger, even while distrusting his most de- 

 voted friends." He lost much money in 

 mining ! 



Hall's scientific career began in 1836 and 

 for sixty-two years he dominated Paleozoic 

 geology, and more especially paleontology, in 



