The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884Temple, Frederick
Religion
The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884
Temple, Frederick
Religion and science
On this side also, as on the scientific side, the teaching of the
spiritual faculty and the teaching of Revelation indicate that the
physical and the spiritual worlds are one whole, and that neither is
complete without the other. Science enters into Religion, and is its
counterpart, and has its share to take in the conduct of life and in the
formation of opinion. And the believer is bound to recognise its value
and make use of its services.
In conclusion, it is plain that the antagonism between Science and
Religion arises much more from a difference of spirit and temper in the
students of each than from any inherent opposition between the two. The
man of Science is inclined to shut out from consideration a whole body
of evidence, the moral and spiritual; the believer is inclined to shut
out the physical. And each, from long looking at that evidence alone
which properly belongs to his own subject, is inclined to hold the other
cheap, and to charge on those who adduce it either blindness of
understanding or wilful refusal to accept the truth. And when such a
conflict arises it is the higher and not the lower, it is Faith and not
Science that is likely to suffer. For the physical evidence is tangible,
and the perception of it not much affected by the character of the man
who studies it; the spiritual evidence stands unshaken in itself, but it
is hid from eyes that have no spiritual perception, and that perception
necessarily varies with the man.
By what means then can a man keep his spiritual perception in full
activity? And is there any test by which a man may know whether his
spiritual faculty is in contact with the source of all spiritual life
and is deriving from that source the full flow of spiritual power?
Revelation, if it tells us anything, ought to tell us this. And the
answer which Revelation makes is expressed in the words of St. Paul, 'No
man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' This
doctrine runs through the New Testament, and it implies that one main
purpose of our Lord's appearance among men was to give them in His
life, His character, His example, His teaching, at once a touchstone by
which they could always try their own spirits, and judge of the real
condition of their own spiritual faculty, and also a vivid presentation
of the supreme spiritual law by which they could for ever more and more
elevate and purify and strengthen their own spiritual power and
knowledge.
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