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hitherto been, mere logomachies. As long as certain physicists choose to 
remain on the low naturalistic level which they have so persistently occupied 
in the past, we must say to them that any rational notion of the very 
existence of a purely intellectual and supernatural order of things, must 
from the nature of the case remain, for them, a sheer impossibility. Contro- 
versy, under such conditions, is little else than wildly beating the air. 
I acknowledge with all due respect the high value of the definite formal 
teachings by men of science, who by their labours and achievements within 
their own line of study have proved themselves entitled to confidence. I am 
willing to use what powers and opportunities I possess to learn from them 
what they have to teach of new and true. But the opinions of these men 
outside their own sphere have no special value. That some distinguished 
physicists should show deep and bitter hostility to what all Christians regard 
as most sacred, is as deplorable as it is astonishing. But it would not be 
candid on my part to suppress the strong conviction I have long entertained, 
that many leaders in physical science who are manifestly, whether they know 
it or not, the ardent devotees of principles which necessarily lead to mere 
naturalistic atheism, have been more or less driven into this strange frame 
of mind by the pseudo-theology which for so many centuries to the present 
hour has usurped the name and place of Christian truth. I do not hesitate 
to assert that the clergy and other religious teachers have much to answer for 
in this respect. 
PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER’S REPLY. 
I beg leave to express my thanks to the gentlemen who have commented 
so kindly upon my critique of Professor Tyndall’s address at Birmingham, 
and to ask their attention to a brief explanation of what I did, and what I 
did not, propose to accomplish in writing it. 
I did not propose to discuss any matter which was not furnished by the 
discourse itself, least of all to write an exhaustive disquisition upon the Pro- 
fessor’s philosophical or theological theories, or the mischievous tendencies of 
either, but to confine myself to the positions taken in the discourse itself, and 
to subject its statements of fact, its suggested analogies, and its logic to a close, 
though courteous criticism. The methods of reaching the truths of physical 
science ought by this time to be capable of definite statement, and of decisive 
application to the important questions which are at present so earnestly 
discussed. Professor Tyndall has himself given to these methods special 
