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Fannie Isabelle Sherrick - "Love or Fame; and Other Poems"

William Cowper Brann - "*Project Gutenberg's Etext of Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast*"

Thomas Love Peacock - "Crotchet Castle"

Emile Gaboriau - "Other People's Money"

History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom





Nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing courtesy
shown in late years by leading supporters of the older view.
During the last two decades of the present century there has been
a most happy departure from the older method of resistance, first
by plausibilities, next by epithets, and finally by persecution.
To the bitterness of the attacks upon Darwin, the Essayists and
Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have succeeded, among really
eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. While Matthew
Arnold no doubt did much in commending "sweet reasonableness" to
theological controversialists, Mr. Gladstone, by his perfect
courtesy to his opponents, even when smarting under their
heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. Nor should the
spirit shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the
traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. Truly
pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one of
the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research,
even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms,
and under all the temptations of ex cathedra utterance, remaining
mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose
ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he is comforted by the faith
that Christianitv will survive; and this faith his opponents
fully share.[505]

[505] As an example of courtesy between theologic opponents may
be cited the controversy between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley,
Principal Gore's Bampton Lectures for 1891, and Bishop Ellicott's
Charges, published in 1893.

To the fact that the suppression of personal convictions among
"the enlightened" did not cease with the Medicean popes there are
many testimonies. One especially curious was mentioned to the
present writer by a most honoured diplomatist and scholar at
Rome. While this gentleman was looking over the books of an
eminent cardinal, recently deceased, he noticed a series of
octavos bearing on their backs the title "Acta Apostolorum."
Surprised at such an extension of the Acts of Apostles, he opened
a volume and found the series to be the works of Voltaire. As to
a similar condition of things in the Church of England may be
cited the following from Froude's Erasmus: "I knew various
persons of high reputation a few years ago who thought at the
bottom very much as Bishop Colenso thought, who nevertheless
turned and rent himto clear their own reputations--which they did
not succeed in doing." See work cited, close of Lecture XI.



VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.


For all this dissolving away of traditional opinions regarding
our sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general
and powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause
surrounding and permeating all. This is simply the atmosphere of
thought engendered by the development of all sciences during the
last three centuries.

Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion,
coming into this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now
dissolving quietly away like icebergs drifted into the Gulf
Stream. In earlier days, when some critic in advance of his
time insisted that Moses could not have written an account
embracing the circumstances of his own death, it was sufficient
to answer that Moses was a prophet; if attention was called to
the fact that the great early prophets, by all which they did and
did not do, showed that there could not have existed in their
time any "Levitical code," a sufficient answer was "mystery"; and
if the discrepancy was noted between the two accounts of creation
in Genesis, or between the genealogies or the dates of the
crucifixion in the Gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity."
But the thinking world has at last been borne by the general
development of a scientific atmosphere beyond that kind of
refutation.

If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed
sciences, the older growths of biblical interpretation have
drooped and withered and are evidently perishing, new and better
growths have arisen with roots running down into the newer
sciences. Comparative Anthropology in general, by showing that
various early stages of belief and observance, once supposed to
be derived from direct revelation from heaven to the Hebrews, are
still found as arrested developments among various savage and
barbarous tribes; Comparative Mythology and Folklore, by showing
that ideas and beliefs regarding the Supreme Power in the
universe are progressive, and not less in Judea than in other
parts of the world; Comparative Religion and Literature, by
searching out and laying side by side those main facts in the
upward struggle of humanity which show that the Israelites, like
other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost worship,
fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and
that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and statements
regarding the God they worshipped became nobler and better--all
these sciences are giving a new solution to those problems which
dogmatic theology has so long laboured in vain to solve. While
researches in these sciences have established the fact that
accounts formerly supposed to be special revelations to Jews and
Christians are but repetitions of widespread legends dating from
far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly thought
fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on
ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect
and conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious
and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and
legend are all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all
individual or national life of any value must be vitalized by
them.[506]

[506] For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this
atmosphere of scientific thought upon the most eminent
contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by
the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the
article in the Contemporary Review for May, 1892, by the Bishop
of Colchester, passim. For some less known examples of sacred
myths and legends inherited from ancient civilizations, see
Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, passim, but especially
chaps. ii, iv, v, vi; see also Goldziher.


If, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to
dissolve away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic
interpretation, it has also been active in a reconstruction and
recrystallization of truth; and very powerful in this
reconstruction have been the evolution doctrines which have grown
out of the thought and work of men like Darwin and Spencer.

In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed:
out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of
hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has
come, in obedience to this new conception of development, the
idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking
evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. Of
all the sacred writings of the world, it shows us our own as the
most beautiful and the most precious; exhibiting to us the most
complete religious development to which humanity has attained,
and holding before us the loftiest ideals which our race has
known. Thus it is that, with the keys furnished by this new
race of biblical scholars, the way has been opened to treasures
of thought which have been inaccessible to theologians for two
thousand years.

As to the Divine Power in the universe: these interpreters have
shown how, beginning with the tribal god of the Hebrews--one
among many jealous, fitful, unseen, local sovereigns of Asia
Minor--the higher races have been borne on to the idea of the
just Ruler of the whole earth, as revealed by the later and
greater prophets of Israel, and finally to the belief in the
Universal Father, as best revealed in the New Testament. As to
man: beginning with men after Jehovah's own heart--cruel,
treacherous, revengeful--we are borne on to an ideal of men who
do right for right's sake; who search and speak the truth for
truth's sake; who love others as themselves. As to the world at
large: the races dominant in religion and morals have been lifted
from the idea of a "chosen people" stimulated and abetted by
their tribal god in every sort of cruelty and injustice, to the
conception of a vast community in which the fatherhood of God
overarches all, and the brotherhood of man permeates all.

Thus, at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a
collection of oracles--a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful
in wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long
and weary ages of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of
fetichism, subtlety, and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly
constituted imposture; of everything which the Lord Jesus Christ
most abhorred--has been gradually developed through the
centuries, by the labours, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of
a long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred
literature--a growth only possible under that divine light which
the various orbs of science have done so much to bring into the
mind and heart and soul of man--a revelation, not of the Fall of
Man, but of the Ascent of Man--an exposition, not of temporary
dogmas and observances, but of the Eternal Law of
Righteousness--the one upward path for individuals and for
nations. No longer an oracle, good for the "lower orders" to
accept, but to be quietly sneered at by "the enlightened"--no
longer a fetich, whose defenders must be persecuters, or
reconcilers, or "apologists"; but a most fruitful fact, which
religion and science may accept as a source of strength to both.

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