The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880Calderwood, Henry
Religion
The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880
Calderwood, Henry
Religion and science
A further consideration bearing on the miracles of Christ needs to be
stated, though it comes more directly into relation with philosophy than
with science properly so called. Every one of these miracles was
performed avowedly for moral ends, and under application of moral
conditions, while for immediate physical effects. There is moral law as
well as physical law, and our Saviour subordinates the latter to the
former in determining the use He makes of supernatural agency. The
evidence of this is interwoven through the very texture of the
narrative, so that an attempt to sever His miracles from their
moral purpose can result only in tearing the narrative into
fragments,--mutilating the record which must be studied and interpreted
as it has been put into our hands. Moral law is as unchangeable as
physical law, though the character and form of its sway differ from
those of physical law, and it is easier for man wilfully to violate the
higher law of life than to violate the lower. Yet so closely are the
higher and lower connected in human history, that the easy violation of
moral law is followed by painful consequences under the reign of
physical law. It lay within the purpose of Jesus to deliver from both,
and it is only in recognition of this combined or complex purpose that
we discover the rational basis on which supernatural deliverance from
disease becomes a natural vehicle for presenting to rational beings
requisite evidence of divine intervention on their behalf as they are
entangled in the disastrous consequences of violating unchangeable moral
law. If on other grounds it be apparent that supernatural interference
for restoration of health or life does not involve interference with
physical law by which the government of the universe could be in any
degree affected; on the grounds now contemplated we come to recognize a
harmony of higher and lower orders of fixed law bearing on the history
of the human race, and for this harmony of law our Saviour manifested a
supreme concern.
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