Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ScientistsHubbard, Elbert
Science
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists
Hubbard, Elbert
Scientists -- Biography
Little theologians who feared Science, on account of danger to pet
texts, received from him kindly pats on the head, as he showed them how
both Science and Scripture were true.
He didn't do away with texts, he merely changed their interpretation.
And often he discovered that the text which seemed to contradict science
was really prophetic of it. John Fiske did not take anything away from
anybody, unless he gave them something better in return.
"A man's belief is a part of the man," he said. "Take it away by force
and he will bleed to death; but if the time comes when he no longer
needs it, he will either slough it or convert it into something more
useful."
Every good thing begins as something else. Evolution is at work on the
creeds as well as in matter. A monkey-man will have a monkey belief.
He evolves the thing he needs, and the belief that fits one man will not
fit another. Religious opinions are never thrown away: they evolve into
something else, and we use the old symbols and imagery to express new
thoughts.
John Fiske, unlike John Morley, considered "Compromise" a great thing.
"Truth is a point of view: let us get together," he used to say. And so
he worked to keep the old, as a foundation for the new.
I once heard him interrupted in a lecture by a questioner who asked,
"Why would you keep the Church intact?" The question stung him into
impassioned speech which was better than anything in his manuscript. I
can not attempt to reproduce his exact language; but the intent was that
as the Church was the chief instrument in preserving for us the learning
of Greece and Rome, so has she been the mother of art, the inspirer of
music and the protector of the outcast. Colleges, hospitals, libraries,
art-galleries and asylums, all come to us through the medium of
religion.
The convent was first a place of protection for oppressed womanhood.
To discard religion would be like repudiating our parents because we did
not like their manners and clothes. The religious impulse is the art
impulse, and both are manifestations of love, and love is the basis of
our sense of sublimity.
We surely will abandon certain phases of religion. We will purify,
refine and beautify our religion, just as we have our table etiquette
and our housekeeping. The millennium will come only through the
scientific acceptance of piety. When Church and State separated it was
well, but when Science and Religion joined hands it was better. Science
stands for the head; Religion for the heart. All things are dual, and
through the marriage of these two principles, one the masculine and the
other the feminine, will come a renaissance of advancement such as this
tired old world on her zigzag journeys has never seen. Sociology is the
religious application of economics. Demonology has been replaced by
psychology, and the betterment of man's condition on earth is now fast
becoming the chief solicitude of the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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