THE DECADENCE OF THEOLOGY 123 



span of history, namely, the New Testament mira- 

 cles, and even these will probably soon be given up. 

 The medical practitioner no longer uses charms or 

 amulets or fantastic remedies ; he is no longer fight- 

 ing against evil spirits or seeking to thwart the will 

 of God. The belief in the devil theory of insanity 

 only lingers here and there in a few minds. The 

 president of one of our colleges lately declared, in 

 print, his belief in the theory. Some of the reli- 

 gious^ journals have protested against the late experi- 

 ments of the government to compel rain, showing a 

 remnant of the old theological idea that rain is a 

 special providence. Probably the same type of 

 mind is shocked at the audacity of the lightning-rod 

 man ; to be consistent it ought to discountenance 

 the umbrella man as well, since to shed the elec- 

 tric fluid by aid of the lightning rod seems no more 

 irreligious than to shed the aqueous fluid by aid of 

 the umbrella. The government agents found men 

 in Virginia who had religious scruples about spraying 

 their grapes against the black rot, and many good 

 people still hold to special providences in their daily 

 lives. Prayer, especially for material good, is a 

 survival of the old theological concept. But for all 

 practical purposes, in medicine, in geology, in astro- 

 nomy, in the daily ordering of our lives, and in the 

 springs of our natural civilization, the theological 

 conception has been overthrown and the scientific 

 conception has taken its place. We no longer 

 tremble at an eclipse or at a comet, and see in the 

 northern lights the gleam of the fires of hell. We 



