Where Science and Religion MeetPalmer, William Scott
Religion
Where Science and Religion Meet
Palmer, William Scott
Religion and science
It is easy to forget and misinterpret, very easy to substitute for
divine spirit and life and the divine 'word,' a machinery of logic or
tradition or institutional arrangement. But it is destructive of the
possibility of mutual understanding between us. Again, we must urge, it
is machine-like scheming that divides, not real religion or knowledge of
life. 'Ye have made the word of God of none effect through your
tradition' is a prophet's saying of the widest application in the
affairs of men. But when we recognize this, even on one side only of a
dividing line, the process of correction has begun. And as a matter of
fact there is recognition now on both sides, and day by day it extends
itself and its influence. Science and philosophy and religion are met
together as they have never in the history of the world been met before,
open-eyed, conscious of the common heritage of training in the battle of
the world and in the struggles of practical life, which has biased every
one of us and been the chief agent in turning the common search after
truth by men of good will into a war of opinions.
To confess that we are all, in so far as we are honest seekers,
'builders of Jerusalem' after our own manner and degree, is the first
and perhaps the hardest step to take towards full co-operation between
us. What children we are, that we do not know it! Yet, in truth, we
cannot know it until on both sides we give up the fond belief, the
delusion, that we are not seekers but have either attained or received,
either attained the full truth of the world and ourselves by knowledge,
or received it through an external and externally given revelation. Once
we know that we are all pilgrims and that the divine city lies ahead for
every one of us, both in knowledge and in life, we may travel together.
With the Christian we may work for the divine kingdom. We share his
belief and his trust in the omnipotence of redeeming love. Nothing, we
see, can redeem this earth but love. There is love to be seen faintly,
amid dark and conflicting shadows, in the biologist's picture of a
world-Eden, where it is after all and in spite of all 'creation's final
law.' But the fulness of its glory is unveiled only in the love of
Christ, passing our knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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