Professor Sims Woodhead, well known as one of the distinguished
contributors to pathology in the nineteenth century and who was,
before being professor of pathology at Cambridge the director of the
Laboratories of the Conjoint Board of the Royal College of Physicians
(London) and Surgeons (England) may very well be taken as a
representative of the medical scientists of the last generation of the
nineteenth century. It has been said that where there are three
physicians there are two atheists, and perhaps this may be true among
the smaller fry of the profession, but it certainly is not among the
most distinguished members of it. Such men as Pasteur, Lord Lister,
Robert Graves, Corrigan, Laennec, Claude Bernard, Johannes Mueller, are
the outspoken contradiction of it. Pathology and anatomy, in both of
which subjects Professor Woodhead was a teacher, are often said to be
rather serious in their inroads on the faith of the men who pursue
them closely. Professor Woodhead is on record categorically with
regard to this subject of {26} the relations of the Bible and
religion, and science and religion, and his words are well worth while
quoting here.
"As regards the statement that 'recent scientific research has shown
the Bible and Religion to be untrue', nothing is further from the
real fact; the more the Bible is tested the more it is found to be
made up of historical documents. Moreover, it is recognized that the
Bible, as a record of truths, never falls foul of Science in its
search after truth, and scientific men are too true to themselves to
take the stand that they will not accept truth of any kind.
"I agree with you that certain theories put forward in the name of
Science may be opposed to certain theological dogmas; but men are
certainly coming to see that between the facts of Science and the
essential teachings of the Christian religion there is never any
real opposition; and by the 'Christian Religion' I mean the religion
of Christ, not what some people have wished to read into it; and by
'science' I mean a search for truth and knowledge, and by 'men of
science' I mean men engaged in that search."
Professor John W. Taylor, one of the distinguished physicians of Great
Britain and president of the British Gynecological Society, summed up
the answer to the question "Can We Still Believe?" in words that show
how devout a great medical scientist can be:
"What can we 'hold by' as Christians? We can hold by the Faith of the
early Apostles as enunciated in the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds,
and plainly foreshadowed in 1 Cor. xv. This was written within thirty
years of our Lord's crucifixion and must have been 'received' by St.
Paul immediately on his conversion." Any one who will turn to that
chapter of First Corinthians will {27} find that it contains all the
essentials of Christian faith, yet here is a great modern physician
finding in it the expression of his own mental attitude toward
religion in our time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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