424 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



lives" — it is scientific — there are the words, the words are things, and beyond 

 them we don't know anything and you can't. And so we have the two teachers 

 — the one that it was but is not, the other it is, but though we see we can never 

 know. The newer thought meets both; it tells the dogmatist that if he is right 

 as to the authority he rests on primarily, that authority can be found to-day as 

 well as two and six thousand years ago. And to the scientist it says, if your 

 facts are true, they tell that there is a higher power in man than mere molecular 

 force, and that he is an intelligent being beyond his mere physical properties. If 

 this view of things cannot stand, then all the claims of dogma, all the supposi- 

 tions of science go for naught. The universe, physical, moral, spiritual, must 

 be a whole, whether man has or has not the right conception in regard to it. 



Once do away with these assumptions referred to, and the primitive knowl- 

 edge as to life will be restored to man, nature will re-appear in all her gracious 

 motherhood to humanity, and God be worshipped with an aspiration and beati- 

 tude to which the race has been a stranger. It will require a re-casting of creeds, 

 but that which comes in their place will be purer, higher, grander, and satisfying 

 to the soul of man. 



It is not the purpose here to go beyond this limit, nor to dogmatize about the 

 evidence, or doctrines and philosophy growing from this view of things. Only 

 to present an argument from recognized facts of science and the premises of faith 

 for the conclusion that there is nothing in either to forbid the student from inves- 

 tigating in this direction. To show that all barriers as to matter were being swept 

 away by discovery and research, and that the theories held by men of science 

 which shut out spirit from the problems of modern knowledge are rapidly disap- 

 pearing before the march of demonstrated facts. Also, to point out that the 

 facts of science itself have pushed the inquiry to the border of the unseen world; 

 that we must question it to understand realities already iq? our possession, other- 

 wise impossible of explanation. An intelligent mind can no longer maintain its 

 position as such and ignore this inquiry — for all else has been exhausted. Science 

 has piled hypothesis upon hypothesis to account for this and explain that, until 

 its theories have undermined the very foundation upon which its whole structure 

 rests. It is now rushing about blindly, denying, affirming, denouncing and em- 

 bracing, but scarce a sun rises and sets but some assumption is exploded by new 

 knowledge. Still it refuses to turn to the new light streaming in upon humanity, 

 illuminating the minds of men with a fresh and wonderfully simple power. 

 Theology too, thunders against the evidence of its own existence, clinging to its 

 formulas as though the life of humanity would be buried under their crumbling 

 walls. It seems to be terror-stricken that what it calls miracle should prove to 

 be the law of creation, and that the light of inspiration and immortality shall, like 

 the air, the sunlight and the seasons, be the possession of every human being by 

 virtue of his being such. 



This knowledge is open for all, and the privilege of acquiring it for himself, 

 at first hands, is the one great boon that this movement of the age brings to 

 humanity. Each for himself may look for it or not, as he pleases, and no one 



