Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
occupy wholly different spheres, and need in no way
intermeddle with each other. They revolve, as it were, in
different planes, and so never meet. Thus we may pursue
scientific studies with the utmost freedom and, at the same
time, may pay the most reverent regard to theology, having
no fears of collision, because allowing no points of contact
(p. 29).
Surely every unsophisticated mind will heartily concur with the
Bishop's remark upon this convenient refuge for the descendants of
Mr. Facing-both-ways. "I have never been able to understand this
position though I have often seen it assumed." Nor can any demurrer be
sustained when the Bishop proceeds to point out that there are, and
must be, various points of contact between theological and natural
science, and therefore that it is foolish to ignore or deny the
existence of as many dangers of collision.
Finally, the Bishop of Manchester freely admits the force of the
objections which have been raised, on scientific grounds, to prayer,
and attempts to turn them by arguing that the proper objects of prayer
are not physical but spiritual. He tells us that natural accidents and
moral misfortunes are not to be taken for moral judgments of God; he
admits the propriety of the application of scientific methods to the
investigation of the origin and growth of religions; and he is as
ready to recognise the process of evolution there, as in the physical
world. Mark the following striking passage:--
And how utterly all the common objections to Divine
revelation vanish away when they are set in the light of
this theory of a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that
there prevailed, in those earlier days, views of the nature
of God and man, of human life and Divine Providence, which
we now find to be untenable? _That_, we answer, is precisely
what the theory of development presupposes. If early views
of religion and morality had not been imperfect, where had
been the development? If symbolical visions and mythical
creations had found no place in the early Oriental
expression of Divine truth, where had been the development?
The sufficient answer to ninety-nine out of a hundred of the
ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine
education of our race, is asked in that one
word--development. And to what are we indebted for that
potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at
the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and
dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely
pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy
and--alas! that one should have to say it--in spite too
often of theological denunciation (p. 53).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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