THERE is nothing more inspiring just now
to the religious mind than the expansion of the intellectual area of Christianity.
Christianity seemed for a time to have ceased to adapt itself to the widening
range of secular knowledge, and the thinking world had almost left its
side. But the expansion of Christianity can never be altogether contemporaneous
with the growth of knowledge. For new truth must be solidified by time
before it can be built into the eternal truth of the Christian system.
Yet, sooner or later, the conquest comes; sooner or later, whether it be
art or music, history or philosophy, Christianity utilises the best that
the world finds, and gives it a niche in the temple of God.
To the student of God's ways, who reverently
marks His progressive revelation and scans the horizon for each new fulfilment,
the field of science presents just now a spectacle of bewildering interest.
To say that he regards it with expectation is feebly to realize the dignity
and import of the time. He looks at science with awe. It is the thing that
is moving, unfolding. It is the breaking of a fresh seal. It is the new
chapter of the world's history. What it contains for Christianity, or against
it, he knows not. What it will do, or undo--for in the fulfilling it may
undo--he cannot tell. The plot is just at its thickest as he opens the
page; the problems are more in number and more intricate than they have
ever been before, and he waits almost with excitement for the next development.
And yet this attitude of Christianity towards
science is as free from false hope as it is from false fear. It has no
false fear, for it knows the strange fact that this plot is always at its
thickest; and its hope of a quick solution is without extravagance, for
it has learned the slowness of God's unfolding and His patient tempering
of revelation to the young world which has to bear the strain. But, for
all this, we cannot open this new and closely written page as if it had
little to give us. With nature as God's work; with man, God's finest instrument,
as its investigator; with a multitude of the finest of these finest instruments,
in laboratory, field, and study, hourly engaged upon this book, exploring,
deciphering, sifting, and verifying--it is impossible that there should
not be a solid, original, and ever-increasing gain. Add to this man's known
wish to know more, and God's wish that he should know more--for nature
is fuller of nothing than of invitations to learn--and we shall see how
true it is that nature has but to be asked, to give her best.
The one thing to be careful about in approaching
nature is, that we really come to be taught; and the same attitude is honourably
due to its interpreter, science. Religion is probably only learning for
the first time how to approach science. Their former intercourse, from
faults on both sides, and these mainly due to juvenility, is not a thing
to remember. After the first quarrel--for they began the centuries hand
in hand--the question of religion to science was simply, "How dare
you speak at all?" Then as science held to its right to speak just
a little, the question became, "What new menace to our creed does
your latest discovery portend?" By-and-by both became wiser, and the
coarser conflict ceased. Then we find religion suggesting a compromise,
and asking simply what particular adjustment to its last hypothesis science
would demand. But we do not speak now of the right to be heard, or of menaces
to our faith, or even of compromises. Our question is a much maturer one--we
ask what contribution science has to bestow, what good gift the
wise men are bringing now to lay at the feet of our Christ. This question
marks an immense advance in the relation between science and Christianity,
and we should be careful to sustain it. Nothing is more easily thrown out
of working order than the balance between different spheres of thought.
The least assumption of superiority on the part of one, the least hint
of a challenge, even a suggestion of independence, may provoke a quarrel.
In one sense religion is independent of science, but in another it is not.
For science is not independent of religion, and religion dare not leave
it. One notices sometimes a disposition in religious writers, not only
to make light of the claims of science, to smile at its attempts to help
them, to despise its patronage, but even to taunt it with its impotence
to touch the higher problems of life and being at all. Now science has
feelings. This impotence is a fact, but it is the limitation simply of
its function in the scheme of thought; and to taunt it with its insufficiency
to perform other functions is a vulgar way to make it jealous of that which
does perform them. We live in an intellectual commune, and owe too much
to each other to reflect on a neighbour's poverty, even when it puts on
appearances.
The result of the modern systematic study
of nature has been to raise up in our midst a body of truth with almost
unique claims to acceptance. The grounds of this acceptance are laid bare
to all the world. There is nothing esoteric about science. It has no secrets.
Its facts can be seen and handled: they are facts; they are nature itself.
Apart therefore from their attractiveness or utility, men feel that here
at last they have something to believe in, something independent of opinion,
prejudice, self-interest, or tradition. This feeling is a splendid testimony
to man as well as to nature. And we do not grudge to science the vigour
and devotion of its students, for, like all true devotion, it is founded
on an intense faith. Now the mere presence of this body of truth, so solid,
so transparent, so verifiable, immediately affects all else that lies in
the field of knowledge. And it affects it in different ways. Some things
it scatters to the winds at once. They have been the birthright of mankind
for ages, it may be; their venerableness matters not, they must go. And
the power of the new-comer is so self-evident that they require no telling,
but disappear of themselves. In this way the modern world has been rid
of a hundred superstitions.
Among other things which have been brought
to this bar is Christianity. It knows it can approve itself to science;
but it is taken by surprise, and therefore begs time. It will honestly
look up its credentials and adjust itself, if necessary, to the new relation.
Now this is the position of theology at the present moment. The purification
of religion, Herbert Spencer tells us, has always come from science. In
this case it is largely true. And theology proceeds by asking science what
it demands, and then borrows its instruments to carry out the improvements.
This loan of the instruments constitutes the first great contribution of
science to religion.
What are these instruments? We shall name
two--the Scientific Method and the Doctrine of Evolution. The first is
the instrument for the interpretation of Nature; the second is given us
as the method of Nature itself. With the first of these we shall deal formally;
the second will present itself in various shapes as we proceed.
In emphasizing the scientific method as a
contribution from science to Christianity, it is not to be understood that
science has an exclusive, or even a prior claim, either to its discovery
or possession. Along with the germs of all great things, it is found in
the Bible; and theologians all along have fallen into its vein at times,
though they have seldom pursued it long or with entire abandonment. There
are examples of work done in modern theology, German and English, by the
use of this method, which for the purity, consistency, and reverence with
which it is applied are not surpassed by anything that physical science
has produced. At the same time, this is par excellence the method
of science. The perfecting of the instrument, the most lucid exhibition
of its powers, the education in its use, above all the intellectual revolution
which has compelled its application in every field of knowledge, we owe
to natural science. Theology has had its share in this great movement,
how much we need not ask, or seek to prove. The day is past for quarrelling
over rights of discovery; and whether we owe the scientific method to Job
and Paul, or to Bacon and Darwin, is just the kind of question which the
possession of this instrument would warn us not to touch.
To see what the scientific method has done
for Christianity, we have only to ask ourselves what it is. The things
which it insists upon are mainly two--the value of facts, and the value
of laws. From the first of these comes the integrity of science; from the
second its beauty and force. On bare facts science from first to last is
based. Bacon's contribution to science was simply that he vindicated the
place and power, the eternal worth, of facts; Darwin's, that he supplied
it with facts. Now if Christianity possesses anything it possesses facts.
So long as the facts were presented to the world Christianity spread with
marvellous rapidity. But there came a time when the facts were less exhibited
to men than the evidence for the facts. Theology, that is to say, began
to rest on authority. Men or manuscripts were quoted as authorities for
these facts, always with a loss of impressiveness, a loss increasing rapidly
as time distanced the facts themselves. Then as the facts became more and
more remote the Churches became the authorities rather than individual
witnesses, and this was accompanied by a still further loss of power. And
the surest proof of the waning influence of the facts themselves, and the
extent of the loss incurred by the transfer of their credential to authority,
is found in the appeal, which quickly followed, to the secular arm. The
facts, ceasing to be their own warrant, had to be enforced by the establishment
of judicial relations between Church and State. It is these intermediaries
between the facts and the modern observer that stumble science. Its method
is not to deal with persons however exalted, nor with creeds however admirable,
nor with Churches however venerable. It will look at facts and at facts
alone. The dangers, the weakness, the unpracticableness in some cases of
this method, are well known. Nevertheless it is a right method. It is the
method of all reformation; it was the method of the Reformation. The Reformation
was largely a revolt against intermediaries, an appeal to facts. Now Christianity
is learning from science to go back to its facts, and it is going back
to facts. Critics in every tongue are engaged upon the facts; travellers
in every land are unveiling facts; exegetes are at work upon the words,
scholars upon the manuscripts; sceptics, believing and unbelieving, are
eliminating the not-facts; and the whole field is alive with workers. And
the point to mark is that these men are not manipulating, but verifying,
facts.
There is one portion of this field of facts,
however, which is still strangely neglected, and to which a scientific
theology may turn its next attention. The evidence for Christianity is
not the Evidences. The evidence for Christianity is a Christian.
The unit of physics is the atom, of biology the cell, of philosophy the
man, of theology the Christian. The natural man, his regeneration by the
Holy Spirit, the spiritual man and his relations to the world and to God,
these are the modern facts for a scientific theology. We may indeed talk
with science on its own terms about the creation of the world, and the
spirituality of nature, and the force behind nature, and the unseen universe;
but our language is not less scientific, not less justified by fact, when
we speak of the work of the risen Christ, and the contemporary activities
of the Holy Ghost, and the facts of regeneration, and the powers which
are freeing men from sin. There is a great experiment which is repeated
every day, the evidence for which is as accessible as for any fact of science;
its phenomena are as palpable as any in nature; its processes are as explicable,
or as inexplicable; its purpose is as clear; and yet science has never
been seriously asked to reckon with it, nor has theology ever granted it
the place its impressive reality commands. One aim of a scientific theology
will be to study conversion, and restore to Christianity its most
powerful witness. When men, by mere absorption in the present, refuse to
consider history, or from traditional prejudice take refuge in the untrustworthiness
of the records, it is unwise to refer, in the first place at least, to
phenomena which are centuries old, when we have the same among us now.
But not less essential, in the scientific
method, than the examination of facts is the arrangement of them under
laws. And the work of modern science in this direction has resulted in
its grandest achievement--the demonstration of the uniformity of nature.
This doctrine must have an immediate effect upon the entire system of theology.
For one thing, the contribution of the spiritual world to the uniformity
of nature has yet to be made. Not that the natural world is to include
the spiritual, but that a higher natural will be seen to include both.
It cannot be said that Christianity as arranged by theology at present
is highly natural, nor can it be said to be unnatural. In that relation
it is simply neutral. The question of naturalness or the reverse is one
which has not hitherto at all concerned it. There was no call upon theology
to make its presentation of itself with a view to nature, and therefore,
if that is an advisable thing, or a feasible thing, it has yet, on the
large scale at least, to be attempted. In the natural world, the truth
of the uniformity of nature took a long time to grow. No one in the first
instance set himself to establish it. Innumerable workers in innumerable
fields, engaged upon different classes of facts, found a mysterious brotherhood
of common laws. Again and again, and everywhere again and again, the same
familiar lines confronted them, few, simple, and unchangeable, yet each
with a vanishing trend towards an upward point, hidden as yet in mystery.
These workers did not formally consult together about these laws, or seek
to follow them beyond the line of sight. Nor did they try to find a name
for the hidden point to which all converged. But there grew up amongst
them a sense of symmetry in the whole which found expression in the formula,
which is now the postulate of science--the "uniformity of nature."
In the same way probably shall we one day see disclosed the uniformity
of the spiritual world. The earlier work had to be accomplished first,
the scaffolding for the inner temple; but when the whole is finished there
will be nothing in the spiritual world to put the mind of science to confusion.
The laws of both as they radiate upwards will meet in a common cupola,
and between the outer and the inner courts the priests of nature and the
priests of God will go in and out together.
There may be laws, or actings, in the spiritual
world, which it may seem to some impossible to include in such a scheme.
God is not, in theology, a Creator merely, but a Father; and according
to the counsel of His own will He may act in different cases in different
ways. To which the reply is that this also is law. It is the law of the
Father, the law of the paternal relation, the law of the free-will; yet
not an exceptional law, it is the law of all fathers of all free-wills.
Besides, if in the private Christian life the child of God finds dealings
which are not reducible to law, grant even their lawlessness if that be
possible, that is a family matter, a relation of parent and child, similar
to the earthly relation, and scarcely the kind of case to be referred to
science. Into ordinary family relations science rarely feels called to
intrude; and it is obvious that in dealing with this class of cases in
the spiritual world, science is attempting a thing which in the natural
world it leaves alone. If ethics chooses to take up these questions, it
has more right to do so; but that there should be a reserve in the spiritual
world for God acting towards His children in a way past finding out is
what would be expected from the mere analogies of the family. It is a pity
this distinction between the paternal and the governmental relation of
God is not more apprehended by science; for there is an indelicacy about
all these questions which arises from ignorance of it--questions concerning
prayer and natural law, "special providences," and others--which
is painful to devout people. It is not by any means that religion cannot
afford to have these things talked of, but they are to be approached in
privacy, with the sympathy and respect due to family affairs.
The relations of the spiritual man, however,
are not all, or nearly all, in this department. There are whole classes
of facts in the outer provinces which have yet to be examined and arranged
under appropriate laws. The intellectual gain to Christianity of such a
process will be obvious. But there is also a practical gain to the religious
experience of not less moment. Science is nothing if not practical, and
the scientific method has little for Christianity after all if it is not
to exalt and enrich the lives of its followers. It is worth while, therefore,
taking a single example of its practical value.
The sense of lawlessness which pervades the
spiritual world at present re-acts in many subtle and injurious ways upon
the personal experience of Christians. They gather the idea that things
are managed differently there from anywhere else--less strictly, less consistently;
that blessings or punishments are dispensed arbitrarily, and that everything
is ordered rather by a Divine discretion than by a system of fixed principle.
In this higher atmosphere ordinary sequences are not to be looked for--cause
and effect are suspended or superseded. Accordingly, to descend to the
particular, men pray for things which they are quite unable to receive,
or altogether unwilling to pay the price for. They expect effects without
touching the preliminary causes, and causes without calculating the tremendous
nature of the effects. There is nothing more appalling than the wholesale
way in which unthinking people plead to the Almighty the richest and most
spiritual of His promises, and claim their immediate fulfilment, without
themselves fulfilling one of the conditions either on which they are promised
or can possibly be given. If the Bible is closely looked into, it will
probably be found that very many of the promises have attached to them
a condition--itself not unfrequently the best part of the promise. True
prayer for any promise is to plead for power to fulfil the condition on
which it is offered, and which, being fulfilled, is in that act given.
We have need, certainly in this sense, to know more of prayer and natural
law. And science could make no truer contribution to modern Christianity
than to enforce upon us all, as unweariedly as in nature, the law of causation
in the spiritual life. The reason why so many people get nothing from prayer
is that they expect effects without causes; and this also is the reason
why they give it up. It is not irreligion that makes men give up prayer,
but the uselessness of their prayers.
There is one other gain to Christianity to
be expected from the wider use of the scientific method which may be mentioned
in passing. Besides transforming it outwardly and reforming it inwardly,
it must attract an ever-increasing band of workers to theology. There is
a charm in working with a true method, which, once felt, becomes for ever
irresistible. The activity in theology at the present time is almost limited,
and the enthusiasm almost wholly limited, to those who are working with
the scientific method. Round the islands of coral skeletons in the Pacific
Ocean there is a belt of living coral. Each tiny polyp on this outermost
fringe, and here only, secretes a solid substance from the invisible storehouse
of the sea, and lays down its life in adding it to the advancing reef.
So science and so theology grow. Through these workers on the fringing
reef--behind, in contact with the great solid, essential, formulated past;
before, the profound sea of unknown truth--through these workers, and through
these alone, can knowledge grow. The phalanx of able, busy, and joyful
spirits crowding the growing belt of each modern science--electricity,
for example --may well excite the envy of theology. And it is the method
that attracts them. And every day theology too, as it knows this method,
gets busier--not undermining the old reef, nor abandoning it to make a
new one, but adding the living work of living men to this essential, formulated
past.
We are warned sometimes that this method
has dangers, and told not to carry it too far. It is then it becomes dangerous.
The danger arises, not from the use of the scientific method, but from
its use apart from the scientific spirit. For these two are not quite the
same. Some men use the scientific method, but not in the scientific spirit.
And as science can help Christianity with the former, Christianity may
perhaps do something for science as regards the latter. Christianity is
certainly wonderfully tolerant of all this upturning in theology, wonderfully
generous and patient and hopeful upon the whole. And so just is the remark
of "Natural Religion," that the true scientific spirit and the
Christian spirit are one, that the Christian world is probably prepared
to accept almost anything the most advanced theology brings, provided it
be a joint product of the scientific spirit--the fearlessness and originality
of the one, tempered by the modesty, caution, and reverence of the other.
To preserve this confidence, and to keep
this spirit pure, is a sacred duty. There is an intellectual covetousness
abroad just now which is neither the fruit nor the friend of a scientific
age--a haste to be wise, which, like the haste to be rich, leads men into
speculation upon indifferent securities, and can only end in fallen fortunes.
Theology must not be bound up with such speculation. "If"--to
recall one of the fine outbursts of Bacon--"if there be any humility
towards the Creator, any reverence for or disposition to magnify His works,
any charity for man and anxiety to relieve his sorrows and necessities,
any love of truth in nature, any hatred of darkness, any desire for the
purification of the understanding, we must entreat men again and again
to discard, or at least set apart for the while, these volatile and preposterous
philosophies which have preferred these to hypotheses, led experience captive,
and triumphed over the works of God; and to approach with humility and
veneration to unroll the volume of creation, to linger and meditate therein,
and with minds washed clean from opinions to study it in purity and integrity.
For this is that sound and language which `went forth into all lands' and
did not incur the confusion of Babel; this should men study to be perfect
in, and becoming again as little children, condescend to take the alphabet
of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation
thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even unto death."
The one safeguard is to use the intellectual method in sympathetic association
with the moral spirit. The scientific method may bring to light many fresh
and revolutionary ideas; the scientific spirit will see that they are not
given a place as dogmas in their first exuberance, that they are held with
caution, and abandoned with generosity on sufficient evidence. The scientific
method may secure many new and unique possessions; the scientific spirit
will wear its honours humbly, knowing that after all new truth is less
the product of genius than the daughter of time. And in its splendid progress
the scientific method will find some old lights dim, some cherished doctrines
old-fashioned, venerable authorities superseded; the scientific spirit
will be respectful to the past, checking that mockery at the old which
those who lack it make unthinkingly, and remembering that the day will
come for its work also to pass away.
So much for the scientific method. Let us
now consider for a moment one or two of its achievements. Apart from the
usual reservations, which it is hoped are always implied--that science
is only in its infancy, that the scientific method is almost still a novelty,
that therefore we are not to expect too much nor to be absolutely sure
of what we get--there is a special reason in this case for remembering
that science is new. For this will prepare us to expect its contribution
to theology--its contribution, that is, where the actual subject-matter
of laws and discoveries of science are involved, its method--in one direction
rather than in another, and in certain departments rather than others.
Itself at an elementary stage, we should be wrong to look for any very
pronounced contribution as yet to the higher truths of religion We should
expect the first effect among the elements of religion. We should expect
science to be fairly decided in its utterances about them, to become more
and more hesitating as it runs up the range of Christian doctrine, and
gradually to lapse into silence. Proceeding upon this principle we should
go back at once to Genesis. We should begin with the beginnings, and expect
the first serious contribution to theology on the doctrine of creation.
And what do we find? We find that upon this
subject of all others science has most to offer us. It comes to us freighted
with vast treasures of newly noticed facts, but with a theory which by
many thoughtful minds has been accepted as the method of creation. And,
more than this, it tells us candidly it has failed--and the failures of
science are among its richest contributions to Christianity--it has failed
to discover any clue to the ultimate mystery of origins, any clue which
can compete for a moment with the view of theology.
Consider first this impressive silence of
science on the question of origins. Who creates, or evolves? whether do
the atoms come, or go? These questions remain as before. Science has not
found a substitute for God. And yet, in another sense, these questions
are very different from before. Science has put them through its crucible.
It took them from theology, and deliberately proclaimed that it would try
to answer them. They are now handed back, tried, unanswered, but with a
new place in theology and a new power with science. Science has attained,
after this ordeal, to a new respect for theology. If there are answers
to these questions, and there ought to be, theology holds them And theology
likewise has learned a new respect for science. In its investigations of
these questions science has made a discovery. It has seen plainly that
atheism is unscientific. It is a remarkable thing that after trailing its
black length for centuries across European thought, atheism should have
had its doom pronounced by science. With its most penetrating gaze science
has now looked at the back of phenomena. It says: "The atheist tells
us there is nothing there. We cannot believe him. We cannot tell what it
is, but there is certainly something. Agnostics we may be, we can no longer
be atheists."
This permission to theism to go on, this
invitation to Christianity to bring forward its theory to supplement science
here, and give this something a name, is a great advance. And science has
not left here a mere vague void for Christianity to fill, but a carefully
defined niche with suggestions of the most striking kind as to how it is
to be filled. It has never been sufficiently noticed how complete is the
scientific account of a creative process, and how here biology and theology
have actually touched. Watch a careful worker in science for a moment,
and see how nearly a man by searching has found out God. The observer is
Mr. Huxley. He stands looking down the tube of a powerful microscope. Almost
touching the lens, he has placed a tiny speck of matter, which he tells
us is the egg of a little water-animal, the common salamander or water-newt.
He is trying to describe what he sees; it is the creation or development
of a life. "It is a minute spheroid," he says, "in which
the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing
a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. But strange possibilities
lie dormant in that semi-fluid globe. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach
its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and
yet so steady and purposelike in their succession, that one
can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon
a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel the mass is divided
and sub-divided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced
to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest
fabrics of the nascent organism. And then it is as if a delicate finger
traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the
contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, and the tail at the
other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions
in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one
is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle
aid to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden artist with his
plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work."[15]
So near has this observer come to a creator from the purely scientific
side, that he can only describe what he sees in terms of creation. From
the natural side he has come within a hair's-breadth of the spiritual.
Science and theology are here simply touching each other. There is not
room really for another link between. And it will be apparent, on a moment's
reflection, that we have much more in this than the final completion of
a religious doctrine. What we really have is the joining of the natural
and spiritual worlds themselves. It seems such a long way, to some men,
from the natural to the spiritual, that it is a relief to witness at last
their actual contact even at a point. And this is also a presumption that
they are in unseen contact all along the line; that as we push all other
truths to the last resort they will be met at the point where they disappear,
that the complementary relations of religion and science will more and
more be manifest; and that the unity, though never the fusion of the natural
and the spiritual will be finally disclosed.
When we turn now to the larger question of
the creation of the world itself, we find much more than silence, or a
permission to go on. We find science has a definite theory on that subject.
It offers, in short, to theology, a doctrine of the method of creation,
in its hypothesis of evolution. That this doctrine is proved yet, no one
will assert. That in some of its forms it is never likely to be proved,
many are convinced. It will be time for theology to be unanimous about
it when science is unanimous about it. Yet it would be idle to deny that
in a general form it has received the widest assent from theology. But
if science is satisfied, even in a general way, with its theory of the
method of creation, "assent" is a cold word for theology to welcome
it with. It is needless at this time of day to point out the surpassing
grandeur of the new conception. How it has filled the Christian imagination
and kindled to enthusiasm the soberest scientific minds is known to all.
For that splendid hypothesis we cannot be too grateful to science, and
that theology can only enrich itself which gives it even temporary place.
There is a sublimity about the old doctrine of creation--we are speaking
of its scientific aspects--which, if one could compare sublimities, is
not surpassed by the new; but there is also a baldness. Fulfilments in
this direction were sure to come with time, and they have come almost before
the riper mind had felt its need of them. The doctrine of evolution fills
a gap at the very beginning of our religion, and no one who looks now at
the transcendent spectacle of the world's past, as disclosed by science,
will deny that it has filled it worthily. Yet, after all, its beauty is
not the only part of its contribution to Christianity. Scientific theology
required a new view, though it did not require it to come in so
magnificent a form. What it wanted was a credible presentation, in view
especially of astronomy, geology, and biology. These had made the former
theory simply untenable. And science has supplied theology with a theory
which the intellect can accept and which for the devout mind leaves everything
more worthy of worship than before.
From the contemplation of the flood of light
poured by science over the doctrine of Creation, we might pass on to mark
the effect upon many other theological truths which rays from the same
source are beginning to illuminate. Nothing could be more interesting than
to trace up the doctrines one by one in order, and watch the light gradually
stealing over all. This must always be a beautiful sight; for this is the
light of nature, and even its dawn is lovely. We should like to mark where
the last ray gilded the last hill-top, and see how many higher peaks lay
still beyond in shadow. And then we should like to prophesy that another
light will rise, when physical science is dim, to illuminate what remains.
We do not mean an inspired word, but a further contribution from nature
itself. To many men of science, judging by the small esteem in which they
hold philosophy, the day of mental science apparently is past. To
an enlightened theology it is the science of the future. It were strange
indeed, and a contradiction of evolution, if the science of atoms and cells
were a later or further development than the science of man. Theology sees
the point at which physical science must cease to help it; but encouraged
by that help, it will expect a science to arise to carry it through the
darkness that remains. The analogies of biology may be looked to to elucidate
the mysterious phenomena of regeneration. When theology has received its
full contribution from natural science it will be able to present to the
world a scientific account of its greatest fact. The ultimate mystery of
life, whether natural or spiritual, may still remain: but the laws, if
not the processes, of the second birth will take their place in that great
circle of the known which science is slowly redeeming from the surrounding
darkness. We shall then have an embryology, a morphology, and a physiology
of the new man; and a scientific theology will add to its departments a
higher biology. But this cannot exhaust theology any more than biology
exhausts the accounts of the natural man. Further contributions must come
in from higher sciences, and different classes of facts must be arrayed
under other laws. Theology, therefore, predicates a science of man which
is yet to come. There is nothing external to theology; it must collate
the different revelations in mind and matter, as science gathers them,
one by one. The sciences are but so many natural history collectors, busy
over all the world of nature and of thought in gathering material for the
final classification by the final science. Without theology, the sciences
are incomplete, and theology can only complete itself by completing the
sciences.
But we have only space at present to note
one or two other examples of the contribution of physical science, and
these of a somewhat general kind. One shall be the doctrine of revelation
itself. That science shows the necessity for a revelation in a new way,
and even hints at subtle analogies for the mode in which it is conveyed
to human minds, are points well worth developing. But we can only deal
now with the more familiar question of subject-matter and see how that
has been affected by evolution.
According to science, as we have already
seen, evolution is the method of creation. Now, creation is a form of revelation;
it is the oldest form of revelation, the most accessible, the most universal,
and still an ever-increasing source of theological truth. It is with this
revelation that science begins. If then science, familiar with this revelation,
and knowing it to be an evolution, were to be told of the existence of
another revelation--an inspired word--it would expect that this other revelation
would also be an evolution. Such an anticipation might or might not be
justified; but from the law of the uniformity of nature, there would be,
to a man of science, a very strong presumption in favour of any revelation
which bore this scientific hall-mark, which indicated, that is to say,
that God's word had unfolded itself to men like His works.
Now, if science searches the field of theology
for an additional revelation, it will find a Bible awaiting it--a Bible
in two forms. The one is the Bible as it was presented to our forefathers:
the other is the Bible of modern theology. The books, the chapters, the
verses, and the words, are the same in each; yet in form they are two entirely
different Bibles. To science the difference is immediately palpable. Judging
of each of them from its own standpoint, science perceives after a brief
examination that the distinction between them is one with which it has
been long familiar. In point of fact, the one is constructed like the world
according to the old cosmogonies, while the other is an evolution. The
one represents revelation as having been produced on the creative hypothesis,
the Divine-fiat hypothesis, the ready-made hypothesis; the other on the
slow growth or evolution theory. It is at once obvious which of them science
would prefer--it could no more accept the first than it could accept the
ready-made theory of the universe.
Nothing could be more important than to assure
science that the same difficulty has for some time been felt, and with
quite equal keenness, by theology. The scientific method in its hand, scientific
theology has been laboriously working at a reconstruction of biblical truth
from this very view-point of development. And it no more pledges itself
to-day to the interpretations of the Bible of a thousand years ago than
does science to the interpretations of nature in the time of Pythagoras.
Nature is the same to-day as in the time of Pythagoras, and the Bible is
the same to-day as a thousand years ago. But the Pythagorean interpretation
of nature is not less objectionable to the modern mind than are many ancient
interpretations of the Scriptures to the scientific theologian.
The supreme contribution of Evolution to
Religion is that it has given it a clearer Bible. One great function of
science is, not, as many seem to suppose, to make things difficult, but
to make things plain. Science is the great explainer, the great expositor,
not only of nature, but of everything it touches. Its function is to arrange
things, and make them reasonable. And it has arranged the Bible in a new
way, and made it as different as science has made the world. It is not
going too far to say that there are many things in the Bible which are
hard to reconcile with our ideas of a just and good God. This is only expressing
what even the most devout and simple minds constantly feel, and feel to
be sorely perplexing, in reading especially the Old Testament. But these
difficulties arise simply from an old-fashioned or unscientific view of
what the Bible is, and are similar to the difficulties found in nature
when interpreted either without the aid of science, or with the science
of many centuries ago. We see now that the mind of man has been slowly
developing, that the race has been gradually educated, and that revelation
has been adapted from the first to the various and successive stages through
which that development passed. Instead, therefore, of reading all our theology
into Genesis, we see only the alphabet there. In the later books we see
primers--first, second, and third: the truths stated provisionally as for
children, but gaining volume and clearness as the world gets older. Centuries
and centuries pass, and the mind of the disciplined race is at last deemed
ripe enough to receive New Testament truth, and the revelation culminates
in the person of Christ.
The moral difficulties of the Old Testament
are admittedly great. But when approached from the new standpoint, when
they are seen to be rudiments spoken and acted in strange ways to attract
and teach children, they vanish one by one. For instance, we are told that
the iniquities of the father are to be visited upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation. The impression upon the early mind undoubtedly
must have been that this was a solemn threat which God would carry out
in anger in individual cases. We now know, however, that this is simply
the doctrine of heredity. A child inherits its parents' nature not as a
special punishment, but by natural law. In those days that could not be
explained. Natural law was a word unknown; and the truth had to be put
provisionally in a form that all could understand. And even many of the
miracles may have explanations in fact or in principle, which, without
destroying the idea of the miraculous, may show the naturalness of the
supernatural.
The theory of the Bible, which makes belief
in revelation possible to the man of science, Christianity owes to the
scientific method. It is not suggested that the evolution theory in theology
was introduced to satisfy the mind of the scientific thinker, any more
than that his appreciation of it is the test of its truth. As regards the
latter, it is to be weighed on its own evidence and judged by its fruits;
and as regards the question of origin, its ancestry is much more reputable,
for it was not a concession to any theory, but rose out of the facts themselves.
Indeed, long before evolution was formulated in science, discerning minds
had seen, with an enthusiasm which few could at that time share, the slow,
steady, upward growth of theological truth to ever higher and nobler forms.
"Wonderful it is to see with what effort, hesitation, suspense, interruption--with
how many swayings to the right and to the left--with how many reverses,
yet with what certainty of advance, with what precision in its march, and
with what ultimate completeness, it has been evolved; till the whole truth,
`self-balanced on its centre hung,' part answering to part, one, absolute,
integral, indissoluble, while the whole lasts! Wonderful to see how heresy
has but thrown this idea into fresh forms, and drawn out from it further
developments, with an exuberance which exceeded all questionings, and a
harmony which baffled all criticism." These are not the words of modern
science. They were written forty years ago by John Henry Newman. Since
then the central idea of this passage, which though it does not refer to
the Bible is equally applicable to it, has been carried into departments
of theology, in ways which were then undreamed of; and however physical
science may have contributed to this result, it is certain that the method
is not the creation of science.
Evolution is the ever-recurring theme in
theology as in nature. We might indeed almost have grouped the entire contribution
of science to Christianity around this point. The mere presence of the
doctrine of Evolution in science has reacted as by an electric induction
on every surrounding circle of thought. Whether we like it or not, whether
we shun the charge, or court it, or dread it, it has come, and we must
set ourselves to understand it. No truth now can remain unaffected by evolution.
We can no longer take out a doctrine in this century or in that, bottle
it like a vintage, and store it in our creeds. We see truth now as a profound
ocean still, but with a slow and ever rising tide. Theology must reckon
with this tide. We can store this truth in our vessels, for the formulation
of doctrine must never, never stop, but the vessels, with their mouths
open, must remain in the ocean. If we take them out the tide cannot rise
in them, and we shall only have stagnant doctrines rotting in a dead theology.
But theology, surely, with its great age, its eternal foundation, and its
countless mysteries, has the least to lose and the most to gain from every
advance of knowledge And the development theory has done more for theology
perhaps than for any other science. Evolution has given to theology some
wholly new departments. It has raised it to a new rank among the sciences.
It has given it a vastly more reasonable body of truth, about God and man,
about sin and salvation. It has lent it a firmer base, an enlarged horizon,
and a richer faith. But its general contribution, on which all these depend,
is to the doctrine of revelation.
What then does this mean for revelation?
It means in plain language that Evolution has given Christianity a new
Bible. Its peculiarity is, that in its form it is like the world in which
it is found. It is a word, but its root is now known, and we have other
words from the same root. Its substance is still the unchanged language
of heaven, yet it is written in a familiar tongue. The new Bible is a book
whose parts, though not of unequal value, are seen to be of different kinds
of value; where the casual is distinguished from the essential, the local
from the universal, the subordinate from the primal end. This Bible is
not a book which has been made; it has grown. Hence it is no longer a mere
wordbook, nor a compendium of doctrines, but a nursery of growing truths.
It is not an even plane of proof text without proportion or emphasis, or
light and shade; but a revelation varied as nature, with the Divine in
its hidden parts, in its spirit, its tendencies, its obscurities, and its
omissions. Like nature it has successive strata, and valley and hilltop,
and mist and atmosphere, and rivers which are flowing still, and here and
there a place which is desert, and fossils too, whose crude forms are the
stepping-stones to higher things. It is a record of inspired deeds as well
as of inspired words, an ascending series of inspired facts in a matrix
of human history.
Now it is to be marked that this is not the
product of any destructive movement, nor is this transformed book in any
sense a mutilated Bible. All this has taken place, it may be, without the
elimination of a book or the loss of an important word. It is simply the
transformation by a method whose main warrant is that the book lends itself
to it.
It may be said, and for a time it will continue
to be said, that the Christian does not need a transformed Bible; and fortunately,
or in some cases unfortunately, this is the case. For years yet the old
Bible will continue to nourish the soul of the Church, as it has nourished
it in the past; and the needy heart will in all time manage to feed itself
apart from any forms. But there is a class, and an ever-increasing class,
to whom the form is much. Theology is only beginning to realize how radical
is the change in mental attitude of those who have learned to think from
science. Intercourse with the ways of nature breeds a mental attitude of
its own. It is an attitude worthy of its master. In this presence the student
is face to face with what is real. He is looking with his own eyes at facts--at
what God did. He finds things in nature just as its Maker left them; and
from ceaseless contact with phenomena which will not change for man, and
with laws which he has never known to swerve, he fears to trust his mind
to anything less. Now this Bible which has been described is the presentation
to this age of men who have learned this habit. They have studied the facts,
they have looked with their own eyes at what God did; and they are giving
us a book which is more than the devout man's Bible, though it is as much
as ever the devout man's Bible. It is the apologist's Bible. It is long
since the apologist has had a Bible. The Bible of our infancy was not an
apologist's Bible. There are things in the Old Testament cast in his teeth
by sceptics, to which he has simply no answer. These are the things, the
miserable things, the masses have laid hold of. They are the stock-in-trade
to-day of the free-thought platform, and the secularist pamphleteer. And,
surprising as it is, there are not a few honest seekers who are made timid
and suspicious, not a few on the outskirts of Christianity who are kept
from coming further in, by the half-truths which a new exegesis, a re-consideration
of the historic setting, and a clearer view of the moral purposes of God,
would change from barriers into bulwarks of the faith. Such a Bible scientific
theology is giving us, and it cannot be proclaimed to the mass of the people
too soon. It is no more fair to raise and brandish objections to the Bible
without first studying carefully what scientific theologians have to say
on the subject, than it would be fair for one who derived his views of
the natural world from Pythagoras to condemn all science. It is expected
in criticisms of science that the critic's knowledge should at least be
up to date, that he is attacking what science really holds; and the same
justice is to be awarded to the science of theology. When science makes
its next attack upon theology, if indeed that shall ever be again, it will
find an armament, largely furnished by itself, which has made the Bible
as impregnable as nature.
One question, finally, will determine the
ultimate worth of this contribution to Christianity. Does it help it practically?
Does it impoverish or enrich the soul? Does it lower or exalt God? These
questions with regard to one or two of the elementary truths of religion
have been partially answered already. But a closing illustration from the
highest of all will show that here also science is not silent.
Science has nothing finer to offer Christianity
than the exaltation of its supreme conception--God. Is it too much to say
that in a practical age like the present, when the idea and practice of
worship tend to be forgotten, God should wish to reveal Himself afresh
in ever more striking ways? Is it too much to say, that at this distance
from creation, with the eye of theology resting largely upon the incarnation
and work of the man Christ Jesus, the Almighty should design with more
and more impressiveness to utter Himself as the Wonderful, the Counsellor,
the Great and Mighty God? Whether this be so or not, it is certain that
every step of science discloses the attributes of the Almighty with a growing
magnificence. The author of Natural Religion tells us that "the
average scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and as it
were a greater Deity than the average Christian." Certain it is that
the Christian view and the scientific view together frame a conception
of the object of worship, such as the world in its highest inspiration
has never reached before. The old student of natural theology rose from
his contemplation of design in nature with heightened feeling of the wisdom,
goodness, and power, of the Almighty. But never before had the attributes
of eternity, and immensity, and infinity, clothed themselves with language
so majestic in its sublimity. It is a language for the mind alone. Yet
in the presence of the slow toiling of geology, millennium after millennium,
at the unfinished earth; before the unthinkable past of palaeontology,
both but moments and lightning-flashes to the immenser standards of astronomy:
before these even the imagination reels and leaves an experience only for
religion.