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
Science will continue its progress, and as the thoughts of men become
clearer it will be perpetually more plainly seen that nothing in
Revelation really interferes with that progress. It will be seen that
devout believers can observe, can cross-question nature, can look for
uniformity and find it, with as keen an eye, with as active an
imagination, with as sure a reasoning, as those who deny entirely all
possibility of miracles and reject all Revelation on that account. The
belief that God can work miracles and has worked them, has never yet
obstructed the path of a single student of Science; nor has any student
who repudiated that belief found any aid in his study from that
repudiation. The rush of Science of late years has for the time made
many men fancy that Science is everything; and believers in Revelation
have helped this fancy by insisting on their part that Revelation is
everything; but such waves of opinion, resting really on feeling, are
sure to pass away, and scientific men will learn that there are other
kinds of knowledge besides scientific knowledge, as believers are
already learning that God teaches us by other methods besides the method
of Revelation. The students of the Bible will certainly learn that
Revelation need not fear the discoveries of Science, not even such
doctrines as that of Evolution. And the students of nature will
certainly learn that Science has nothing to fear from the teaching of
Revelation, not even from the claim to miraculous power. For most
certainly both Science and Revelation come from one and the same God;
'the heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handywork;
His law is perfect, converting the soul; His testimony is sure, making
wise the simple.'
LECTURE VIII.
THE CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT.
Uniformity of nature not demonstrated, but established, except in two
cases; the interference of human will and of Divine Will. The exception
no bar to the progress of Science. Unity to be found not in the physical
world, but in the physical and moral combined. The Moral Law rests on
itself. Our recognition of it on our own character and choice. But we
expect it to show its marks in the physical world: and these are the
purpose visible in Creation, the effects produced by Revelation.
Nevertheless a demand for more physical evidence; but the physical
cannot be allowed to overshadow the spiritual. Dangers to believers from
leaning this way: superstition; blindness; stagnation. The guarantee for
spiritual perceptiveness: to take Jesus as the Lord of the conscience,
the heart, the will.
LECTURE VIII.
THE CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT.
'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.'
1 _Cor._ xii. 3.
It is now the proper time to review the argument of these Lectures, and
to endeavour to trace, if possible, the source of the estrangement which
just at present separates Religion and Science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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