THE STRUGGLE FOR REALITIES. 367 
The institutions that survive spring out of man's 
need for them, The existence of the Church has divine 
warrant in this. Should every fragment of the historic 
churches disappear, every memory, every ‘ceremony, 
every trace of creed or form, the Church would rise 
again, renewed as to all its essentials; and with each 
variant, race of man there would be a corresponding 
variation in the form of the Church. You could not 
make Buddhists out of the Puritans, nor transplant the 
New England Sabbath to the sunny isles of Greece. 
Monarchy, in turn, exists by the same divine right; and 
when it fails, the same divinity that hedged the king is 
invoked to sustain the rights of the people. Once the 
king was God’s anointed, as he still is in many lands. 
But when “ God said, ‘I am tired of kings; I suffer them 
no more,’” the self-rule of the people acquired the same 
divine right—no less, no more, for the warrant rests in 
the heart of man. We know God’s purposes only by 
what he lets man do. We know what he wills only by 
what he permits. That which exists in the nature of 
things men have worshipped as divine, especially if its 
relations have been dimly understood. Thus the strug- 
gle of science with prejudice and tradition has become a 
warfare with religion; for men have always sought to 
strengthen their traditional opinions by giving them a 
religious sanction. 
The history of the progress of science has been the 
record of the physical resistance of organized society. 
“By the light of burning heretics Christ’s 
bleeding feet I track.’”’ He who sees that 
the world does move is burned at the 
stake, that other men may be convinced that it does not. 
He who is sure that the rocks were once molten, finds 
the force of social pressure between him and his studies. 
He who would give the sacred books of our civilization 
25 
The struggle 
against tradition. 
