Conclusion 359 



tolerable ? Is it not essential that the Church should face this 

 problem, which for four hundred years it has kept at arm's length ? 

 Do Christians accept those verdicts of astronomical science which 

 seem to be surely established, with those modifications of tradi- 

 tional theology which they imply, or do they not ? To juggle 

 with words, letting 1 dare not wait upon I would, can satisfy 

 nobody. 



There are at least three positions between which the Church 

 may make its choice. It may condemn modern astronomy as 

 impious and heretical, as the Inquisitors and the Reformers agreed 

 in doing. Luther denounced Copernicus as a fool who dared to 

 contradict the Bible, " an upstart astrologer who dared to set his 

 own authority above that of Holy Scripture." Melanchthon 

 thought that those who set forth such theories must have no sense 

 of decency ; and Calvin asked, " Who will venture to place the 

 authority of Copernicus above that of Holy Scripture ? " The 

 Roman Church has lately condemned the doctrine of evolution in 

 terms not less stringent than these. This is one possible policy. 

 It declares that there can be no truce between science and religion 

 till science has renounced its errors and accepted the authority of 

 the Church. 



A second policy, equally open to the Church, is to admit that 

 these traditional doctrines do not belong to the natural order with 

 which science deals, but to claim that they possess a higher truth, 

 to which science cannot reach. This may be done by regarding 

 these and other dogmas as symbolic of eternal truths, aids to the 

 imagination in forming clear conceptions of revealed truth in a 

 region beyond the compass of Qur senses. The apologist for tradi- 

 tion who takes this line will not be content to justify the use of 

 symbols. He will point out that science itself is an imaginative 

 construction ; that the supposed laws of nature are not derived 

 directly from our observation of the behaviour of atoms and mole- 

 cules -, that what are called the assured results of science are the 

 work of the mind upon an abstract view of reality, which neglects 

 the values and qualitative properties of things, and attempts to con- 

 struct a universe out (jf mathematics and chemistry. This dis- 

 paragement of science as incapable of forming any adequate 

 synthesis may be pushed so far as to reach what is called acosmism, 

 the theory which denies the objective existence of the world or 

 universe. The conclusion will then be, that though the dogmas 



