Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts: From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356)Rogers, Henry
Religion
Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts: From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356)
Rogers, Henry
Christianity -- Philosophy; Faith and reason -- Christianity
We have little doubt in our own minds that the ultimately converging
though, it may be, transiently discrepant conclusions of the sciences of
philology, ethnology, and geology (in all of which we may rest assured
great discoveries are yet to be made) will tend to harmonise with the
ultimate results of a more thorough study of the records of the race as
contained in the book of Revelation. Let us be permitted to imagine
one example of such possible harmony. We think that the philologist may
engage to make out, on the strictest principles of induction, from the
tenacity with which all communities cling to their language, and the
slow observed rate of change by which they alter; by which Anglo-Saxon,
for example has become English*, Latin Italian, and ancient Greek modern
(though these languages have been affected by every conceivable cause of
variation and depravation); that it would require hundreds of thousands,
nay millions, of years to account for the production, by known natural
causes, of the vast multitude of totally distinct languages, and tens
of thousands of dialects, which man now utters. On the other hand, the
geologist is more and more persuaded of comparatively recent origin
of the human race. What, then, is to harmonise these conflicting
statements? Will it not be curious if it should turn out that nothing
can possibly harmonise them but the statement of Genesis, that in order
to prevent the natural tendency of the race to accumulate on one spot
and facilitate their dispersion and destined occupancy of the globe, a
preternatural intervention expedited the operation of the causes
which would gradually have given birth to distinct languages? Of the
probability of this intervention, some profound philologist have, on
scientific grounds alone, expressed their conviction. But in all such
matters, what we plead for is only--patience; we wish not to dogmatise;
all we ask is, a philosophic abstinence from dogmatism. In relation to
many difficulties, what is now a reasonable exercise of faith may one
day be rewarded by a knowledge which on those particular points may
terminate it. And, in such ways, it is surely conceivable that a great
part of the objections against Revelation may, in time, disappear; and,
though other objections may be the result of the progress of the other
sciences or the origination of new, the solution of previous objections,
together with the additions to the evidences of Christianity, external
and internal, which the study of history and of the Scriptures
may supply, and the still brighter light cast by the progress of
Christianity and the fulfilment of its prophecies, may inspire
increasing confidence that the new objections are also destined to yield
to similar solvents. Meanwhile, such new difficulties, and those more
awful and gigantic shadows which we have no reason to believe will ever
be chased from the sacred page,--mysteries which probably could not be
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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