Religion and science; Religion and science -- History; Science -- History
Did time permit, we might go over other battle-fields no less
instructive than those we have seen. We might go over the battle-fields
of Agricultural Progress, and note how, by a most curious perversion
of a text of Scripture, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented
from raising and eating potatoes, and how in Scotland at the beginning
of this century the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was
denounced as contrary to the text "the wind bloweth where it listeth,"
etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is "prince of the powers of the air,"
and as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch Church.[147]
We might go over the battle-fields of Civil Engineering, and note
how the introduction of railways into France was declared, by an
Archbishop, to be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country
innkeepers who set meat before their guests on fast-days, and now
were punished by seeing travelers carried by their doors; and how
railroad and telegraph were denounced from noted pulpits as "heralds
of Anti-christ." And then we might pass to Protestant England and
recall the sermon of the Curate of Rotherhithe at the breaking in of
the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declaring that
"it was but a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal
man."[148]
VARIOUS SCIENCES.
We might go over the battle-fields of Ethnology and note how, a few
years since, an honored American investigator, proposing in a learned
society the discussion of the question between the origin of the human
race from a single pair and from many pairs, was called to order and
silenced as atheistic, by a Protestant divine whose memory is justly
dear to thousands of us.[149]
Interesting would it be to look over the field of
Meteorology--beginning with the conception, supposed to be scriptural,
of angels opening and shutting "the windows of heaven" and letting out
"the waters that be above the firmament" upon the earth--continuing
through the battle of Fromundus and Bodin, down to the onslaught upon
Lecky, in our own time, for drawing a logical and scientific conclusion
from the doctrine that meteorology is obedient to laws.[150]
We might go over the battle-fields of Cartography and see how at
one period, on account of expressions in Ezekiel, any map of the
world which did not place Jerusalem in the centre, was looked on as
impious.[151]
We might go over the battle-fields of Social Science in Protestant
countries, and note the opposition of conscientious men to the taking
of the census, in Sweden and in the United States, on account of
the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old
Testament.[152]
And we might also see how, on similar grounds, religious scruples have
been avowed against so beneficial a thing as Life Insurance.[153]
SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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