594 MODERN METHODS OF SCIENCE. 
vestigations, and the speculations to which these give rise in their 
minds. 
Reference has already been made to the tendency of quitting 
the physical to revel in the metaphysical, which, however, is not 
peculiar to this age, for it belonged as well to the times of Plato 
and Aristotle as it does to ours. More special reference will be 
made here to the proclivity of the present epoch among philoso- 
phers and theologians to parade science and religion side by 
side; talking of reconciling science and religion, as if they had 
ever been unreconciled. Scientists and theologians may have 
quarrelled, but never science and religion. At dinners they are 
toasted in the same breath, and calls made on clergymen to re- 
spond, who, for fear of giving offence, or lacking the fire and firm- 
ness of St. Paul, utter a vast amount of platitudes about the 
beauty of science and the truth of religion, trembling in their 
shoes all the time, fearing that science, falsely so called, may take 
away their professional calling, instead of uttering in voice of 
thunder, like the Boanerges of the gospel, that “the world by wis- 
dom knew not God.” And it never will. Our religion is made so 
plain by the light of faith that the wayfaring man, though a fool, 
cannot err therein. 
No, gentlemen ; I firmly believe that there is less connection be- 
tween science and religion than there is between jurisprudence and 
astronomy, and the sooner this is understood the better it will be 
for both. 
Religion is based upon revelation as given to us in a book, the 
contents of which are never changed, and of which there have 
been no revised or corrected editions since it was first given, ex- 
cept so far as man has interpolated ; a book more or less perfectly 
understood by mankind, but clear and unequivocal in all essen- 
tial points concerning the relation of man to his Creator ; a book 
that affords practical directions, but no theory; a book of facts, 
and not of arguments; a book that has been damaged more by 
theologians than by all the pantheists and atheists that have ever 
lived and turned their invectives against it—and no one source of 
mischief on the part of theologians is greater than that of admit- 
ting the profound mystery of many parts of it, and almost in the 
next breath attempting some sort of explanation of these myste- 
ries. The book is just what Richard Whately says it is, viZ. : 
“Not the philosophy of the human mind, nor yet the philosophy of 
TCR Ee ae ea Ae ee ea 
