For calm confiding love, a cool retreat : Whose name in sternly loyal hearts becomes The scholar'd bard, of high enraptured thought, These are earth's pride. She hath green homes, where eyes Here woman shines - woman with angel form, And are these but the bright and glowing spots With changeless friends, and sickness hath some hand The cooling draught; and when pale death shall come, What though we feel not the warm tears that bathe That make a place of beauty of the tomb ? To have them there, is sweet. And doth not this Sate the long hunger of the craving heart? Elizabeth-toen, (N. J.,) 1836. H. L. E. WARFARE OF MISGUIDED ZEAL UPON SCIENCE. 'It is not the persons of true and solid piety,' says Malebranche, 'who ordinarily condemn what they do not understand, but rather the superstitious and the hypocrites. The superstitious, through servile fear, are startled as soon as they see an active and penetrating spirit. For instance, one need only give them some natural reasons for thunder and its effects, to appear an atheist in their eyes: but the hypocrites make use of the appearance of sacred truths, revered by all the world, in order to oppose new truths, by particular interests; they attack truth with the image of truth; and, in their hearts, make a scoff of what the world respects; they establish, for themselves, in the minds of men, a reputation the more solid and the more formidable, as what they thus abuse is more sacred. These persons are, then, the strongest, the most powerful, and the most formidable enemies of truth." 'There is a kind of objection,' says Dr. Gall, which new truths never escape. Ignorance, prejudice, envy, and often bad faith, endeavor to combat these truths. If they cannot attack the principles of a doctrine, they try, at least, to render it suspected, by the dangerous consequences of which they accuse it. 'The followers of the different schools of philosophy among the Greeks mutually accused each other of impiety and perjury. The people in turn, detested the philosophers, and accused those who sought to discern the principles of things, of invading, in a presumptuous manner, the rights of the divinity. The novelty of the opinions of Pythagoras caused his expulsion from Athens; those of Anaxagoras threw him into prison. The Abderites treated Democritus as insane, because he wished to discover, in dead bodies, the cause of insanity; and Socrates, for having demonstrated the unity of God, was condemned to drink hemlock. 'The same scandal has been renewed in all ages, and among all nations. Many of those who distinguished themselves, in the fourteenth century, by their knowledge in the natural sciences, were punished with death as magicians. Gallileo, for having proved the motion of the earth, was imprisoned, at the age of seventy years. Those who first maintained that climate influences the intellectual faculties of nations, made themselves suspected of materialism. The physical truths announced by Linnæus, Buffon, by that pious philosopher, Bounet, and George Leroy, were represented as impieties which threatened to commence the total ruin of religion and morality: even the virtuous and generous Lavater has been treated as a fatalist and a materialist. Every where, fatalism and materialism, placed before the sanctuary of truth, have served to deter the world from entering it.' * These truths deserve consideration, among the friends of improvement, at the present day. At a moment when science, in its various departments, is engrossing so large a portion of the labors and genius of mankind—when its results take so strong a hold upon human belief, and so plainly contribute to human happiness it is exceed * Gall's works, vol. 1., page 191, et seq. Boston edition. ingly to be regretted that any persons, professing the Christian religion, are found to be blindly opposing its progress. 'Is it not the same Creator,' says the author last quoted, 'who has made the moral and the physical world? Can physical truth be in opposition to moral truth? If certain men cry out at the danger with which a real discovery threatens an established doctrine, they render this doctrine singularly suspicious; for either it is false, or we may justly accuse the weakness and ignorance of the pretended interpreters of God's works.' No doubt the diffusion of scientific truth is retarded by ill-judged appeals to religious prejudice; but science suffers less than religion itself. Science rests upon palpable and demonstrative evidence; religious belief on moral proof. The former compels conviction; the latter may be doubted. The evidence of religious truth, though so conclusive as to form the just basis of human action and belief, can never, from its very nature, rise to the certainty of scientific demonstration. To disbelieve the former, may be irrational; to disbelieve the latter, is absurd. When, therefore, well established truths in science are confronted by religious creeds, the verdict of the world will be in favor of science. More clearly will this be the result, when those creeds are confined to a small portion even of the Christian world, and one regarded as unsound, by other portions. Bigotry is indeed strong; it is armed with the most frightful terrors; but science is stronger, and must inevitably triumph in every collision between the two. Sectarian denunciation cannot destroy it; and any modification of belief, which is inconsistent with demonstrative science, must certainly, sooner or later, be discarded. It is, therefore, an ill-judged artifice of misguided zeal or hypocrisy, to raise the cry of infidelity, whenever a discovery in science is announced. If the discovery be confirmed by proper evidence, it will take its place among the subjects of human belief, whatever preconceived doctrines it may conflict with. Nor can it be refuted by exciting alarm at its supposed tendencies and results. Reason,' says a modern writer, knows neither useful truths nor dangerous truths. What is, is; there is no compromising with this principle.' When clerical prejudice was armed with civic power, and, by the terrors of torture, extorted verbal recantations from philosophers of the novel truths their labors had established, it could not quench the light of science. Much less, at the present day, when thoughts and words are free, and science is not within the power of intolerance and bigotry, can empty denunciations and misapplied epithets hinder the spirit of progressive investigation, and arrest the march of discovery. It is surprising that the force of these considerations can still be overlooked by any well meaning person. It is most of all to be wondered at, that any portion of the clergy, when history is pregnant with examples of the folly of opposing science by zeal, should prejudice the religion they teach, by persisting in the futile and pernicious practices of darker ages. Yet there are persons at the present time, as there have been in all former ages, who, possessed of overweening zeal and slender knowledge, do not hesitate to raise the cry of infidelity against every new claim to discovery in science. It is a trace of that same spirit which subjected Gallileo, two hundred years ago, to the persecutions of the Roman Catholic Church: "They bore His chained limbs to a dreary tower, In the midst of a city, vast and wide; For he, they said, from his mind had bent, For which, though his soul must roasted be Yet even on earth, must he abide SHELLEY. Natural philosophy and chemistry, medicine and physiology, have each in turn excited the jealousy and encountered the denunciations of misguided zeal. Physiology, in particular, is still regarded with no kindly feeling by some uninformed religious men. The celebrated William Lawrence, the pupil and colleague of Dr. Abernethy, and the successor of Sir Astley Cooper in the London Royal College of Physicians, was removed from the office of Surgeon of the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, in 1819, on account of the publication of his lectures on physiology. In 1822, he was restored to his office, upon expressing his regret at the publication of his lectures, without admitting any change of opinion with regard to their truth. His removal from office did not contribute, in the least, to weaken the force of his conclusions, or to demonstrate their unsoundness. On the contrary, it gave extraordinary notoriety to principles and arguments which might otherwise have gained but an ordinary portion of the public attention. The lectures, partly in consequence of the indiscreet opposition they met with, have been widely circulated and read in Europe and America. Such is ever the effect of that misguided zeal, which accounts it an act of impiety to pry too closely into the structure of man, and which accuses those who 'seek to discern the principles of things, of invading, in a presumptuous manner, the rights of the divinity.' This jealousy of the results of science takes various forms, and sometimes exhibits itself in the most fantastical and absurd notions. There are well meaning persons who object, on religious grounds, to the establishment of hospitals for foundlings, and who regard it as a presumptuous resistance of the dispensations of Providence, to guard against disease by innoculation, or against lightring by metallic rods! At so late a period as May last, Dr. Fife, a lecturer on chemistry in Edinburgh, complained to his hearers, that in that enlightened city, their instructors, while laboring in their vocations among them, had been assailed as tending to disseminate principles bordering upon infidelity.' We have met with religious men who regarded the beautiful theory which accounts for the rainbow, as a most dangerous infidel doctrine, because it explains, upon the principles of natural science, a phenomena which, according to their apprehension of the Bible, should be regarded as a perpetual miracle. The moral character of the nations of antiquity, and the value of their philosophy, have been grossly misrepresented by the same unjust and jealous spirit of fanaticism. Their philosophy has been sneered at as vain and frivolous, and the moral precepts of their sages to have been pronounced practically useless, by those who believe that God, for the first time, deigned to make known moral truth, in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Under this false notion, much useless sympathy has been wasted upon the poor benighted races of men, who were left, for four thousand years -how consistently with the benevolence of Deity, let those who hold this belief explain grope their way, through moral and intellectual darkness in this life, to eternal perdition in the life to come. Surely, the promulgators of such doctrines cannot have studied, with thorough attention, the moral and philosophical productions they dogmatically condemn. On the contrary, whoever is well read in the literature of Greece and Rome, will readily assent to the liberal concession of a pious, learned, and distinguished Christian minister of the present day,' that there is not one moral precept of the New Testament which may not be found in the old heathen writers." ** The novelties of physical science and morals are not the only improvements which have encountered this kind of opposition. Biblical criticism and interpretation have in some measure come under the same ban. The Rev. Dr. Milman has received an ample share of theological abuse, for attempting, in his eloquent History of the Jews, to account for some of the miracles of the Old Testament, by the operation of natural means in a preternatural manner; and for intimating that the inspiration of that volume may be safely limited to doctrinal points, exclusive of those which are purely historical,'t We all remember the host of imaginary terrors which sprung up when the assiduity of a learned English critic had collected thirty thousand various readings of the Bible: we also know how greatly those labors contributed to strengthen the authenticity of the inspired writings, when the clamor of bigotry had subsided, and calm reason resumed its ascendancy. But we doubt whether Newton, Porson, Griesbach, and others, have ever received the cordial thanks of certain sectarians, for displacing from the sacred text the fifth verse of the first Epistle of John. At least, the spurious passage is retained in our common Bibles, though no biblical critic pretends to defend it. So much stronger is the love of sect and of party, than the love of truth! Even the harmless science of numbers has not escaped the attacks of fanatical zeal. An ingenious gentleman in a neighboring state, in supporting a favorite religious dogma, enters upon an argument, which, so far as we can understand it, is intended to prove, that in certain senses, and under certain circumstances, three are but one, and one is three! Thus skepticism and false doctrine are found lurking in the ground rules of arithmetic! Strictures almost daily appear in our religious periodicals, whose object is to decry the value of human learning, and bring suspicion *Discourse entitled the 'Argument from Miracles;' by the Rev. ORVILLE DEWEY, being the Dudleian Lecture, delivered before Harvard University, in May last. Mr. Dewey's argument derives ten fold force, from the candor with which he concedes to his opponents every thing they have a right to claim. + Milman's History of the Jews: Family Library, No. I. The same learned and excellent writer, in his Bampton Lectures, maintained the preternatural character of the miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles. |