II 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE^ 

 By Robert A. Millikan 



WHEN the life and teachings of Jesus be- 

 came the basis of the religion of the whole 

 western world, an event of stupendous im- 

 portance for the destinies of mankind had certainly 

 taken place, for a new set of ideals had been definitely 

 and officially adopted by a very considerable fraction 

 of the human race, a fraction which will be universally 

 recognized to have held within It no small portion of 

 the world's human energies and progressive capacities, 

 and which has actually been to no small degree deter- 

 minative of the direction of human progress. 



The significance of this event Is completely Inde- 

 pendent even of the historicity of Jesus. The service 

 of the Christian religion, my own faith In essential 

 Christianity, would not be diminished one Iota If It 

 should In some way be discovered that no such Indi- 

 vidual as Jesus ever existed. If the Ideas and Ideals 

 for which he stood sprang up spontaneously In the 

 minds of men without the stimulus of a single great 

 character, the result would be even more wonderful 

 and more Inspiring than It Is now, for It would mean 

 that the spirit of Jesus actually Is more widely spread 

 throughout the world than we realize. In making 



1 From Science and the Nenv Civilization. Copyright, 1930, by 

 Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the publishers. 



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