The Churches and Modern Thought / An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour

P. 5, lines 12–14.-The Copernican system was gradually accepted, and so were the discoveries which followed up to fifty years ago.

Copernicus's book, The Revolution of the Celestial Bodies, was printed a few days before his death, in 1543. The system was condemned by a decree of Pope Paul V., in 1616, which was not revoked till 1818 by Pius VII. The great Kepler (d. 1630) was an astrologer as well as astronomer, and thought the stars were guided by angels. While his mind had a strong grasp of positive scientific truth, it also had an irresistible tendency towards mystical speculation. In those days Science and Religion were easily reconciled. It was fortunate for Newton that he made his discovery of the law of gravitation in a rather more enlightened age and country, otherwise he would inevitably have shared the terrible fate of Giordano Bruno at the hands of the Church's emissaries.

Even in the early eighteenth century the light of science had hardly got beyond the first glimmering of dawn. Mathematics and astronomy were the only sciences which had passed into the positive and final stage. Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, were not yet in a position to speak with authority even on subjects in their own province. Read a popular apologetic work of the eighteenth century; read Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation, edition 1724, and you will find that a defender of the faith had in those days a comparatively easy task. Science being still in its infancy, Dr. Samuel Clarke gave reasons for the truth of Christian dogmas, which, though they could not be controverted then, would now be considered the most abject nonsense. Bead also Mr. S. Laing's remarks on p. 13 of A Modern Zoroastrian, where he tells us that when he was "a student at Cambridge, little more than fifty years ago, astronomy was the only branch of natural science which could be said to be definitely brought within the domain of natural law, and that only as regards the law of gravity and the motions of the heavenly bodies, for little or nothing was known as to their constitution."

P. 5, lines 18–19.-The vast antiquity of the earth.

"It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that 500 to 1,000 million years may have elapsed since the birth of the moon" (see Professor Darwin's Presidential address at the meeting of the British Association in Johannesburg on August 30th, 1905).

P. 8, lines 27–9.-He is well aware of the odium he would incur should he proclaim his heterodox views concerning the popular religion.

Nor is it easy for even a well-known man to get his heterodox views published where they will be widely read. Sir Hiram Maxim wrote lately to the Literary Guide concerning his letter in the "Do We Believe?" correspondence, saying "it was necessary for my letter to have a slight coating of ecclesiastical sugar, otherwise it would not have been published." Does the Church realise the extent to which men of science coat their popular writings with "ecclesiastical sugar"? The retail bookselling trade in England is still largely in the hands of persons belonging to the various sects, and, even where this is not so, few dare to push the works of glaringly heterodox writers. As an example of the difficulties which beset the way of a too truth-loving author, we may notice that it took three years before 2,000 copies of Mr. Samuel Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought could be sold, and its sale brought him no pecuniary profit.

P. 19, lines 2–3.-He [Sir Oliver Lodge] has never yet professed belief in a personal God.

He has now done so. In an article entitled "First Principles of Faith," appearing in the Hibbert Journal for July, 1906, he has drawn up a new formula of faith, which commences: "I believe in one Infinite and Eternal Being, a guiding and loving Father, in whom all things consist." He continues: "I believe that the Divine Nature is specially revealed to man through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lived and taught and suffered in Palestine 1,900 years ago, and has since been worshipped by the Christian Church as the immortal Son of God, the Saviour of the world." This reconstructed Christian (?) creed has been deftly worded; but this, at least, is clear-the Virgin-birth, Resurrection, and Ascension form no part of the religious belief of Sir Oliver Lodge. The full text of the "Catechism" which he has designed for the use of teachers and others interested in the education of the young appears in the Standard of December 14th, 1906.

P. 20, line 31.-The religious naturally wish to discredit science.

It is a common assertion of the pious that modern science has continually to retrace its steps, and admit that it was mistaken in its facts and theories. The following pronouncement by Professor Ray Lankester, in his Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the British Association (held at York in 1906), should disillusion them: "During the last few years an idea has spread abroad that some of the more recent discoveries of science have revolutionised scientific ideas-have upset former theories, or have reversed them. Nothing is further from the truth."

P. 25, lines 19–20.-They [Agnostics] "exhibit the very temper which Christ blesses."

Canon Scott Holland's precise words were: "It is no petulant boy making his petulant repudiation, but a man with steady and deliberate judgment, weighing, examining, testing, and still, at last to his own sorrow, to his own confessed cost, bravely facing what he deems to be the fact, and pronouncing, 'I am not of the Body; I cannot share the life of the Christian community.' And yet, if we look at him, we recognise in every detail of his character the lines that lead to Christ. He illustrates and exhibits the very temper which Christ blesses; he is pure, unselfish, humble, and good.... He may say what he pleases, but Christ has not forsworn him." Subsequently he acknowledges in moving terms that, as the populations are emerging from out of their darkness, so they are repudiating the name of Christ. But he gives no explanation for a circumstance so perplexing to a Christian.

Let me not be misunderstood to say that this extremely lenient view towards the Agnostic is the usual one at present. On the contrary, the Bishop of Moray voices the opinion of the majority of the orthodox when (at the Diocesan Synod held at Inverness Cathedral in the autumn of 1904) he challenges the wisdom of this sympathetic attitude, and asks: "Is this a time to banish into silence, or relegate to an inferior position, the great bulwark of the Faith-the Athanasian Creed?" We are to understand that the curses of the Creed are reserved, not for the man who is born of heathen parents, but for the man who, often with much uprooting of his dearest hopes, and at the cost of losing many friends and even his original means of livelihood, decides that he must forsake the Faith. It seems to me that, before converting the heathen, it would be only fair that the terrible fate they will incur by any subsequent recantation should be distinctly explained to them.

Again, the Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon, in his pamphlet, Atheism and Faith, represents the Atheist in the guise of the Tempter "holding out the bribe of free indulgence of all the passions to our youth, our working classes, our governing classes, and our capitalists." Clergymen who speak with such bitterness and make such sweeping assertions really betray the weakness of their own case. For it is a psychological fact that men are always angriest when they know they are not quite in the right. It is also a statistical fact (so far as statistics can be relied upon for facts) that crime among disbelievers is proportionately small, while among the staunchest believers, the Roman Catholics, it is proportionately large.

P. 29, line 23.-Excite prejudice by the use of a condemnatory adjective.

The Riddle of the Universe was described as a "book of rubbish" by Father Gerard, a member of the "Society of Jesus." He has not the least authority for such an indictment. On the contrary, every single biologist would tell him that he was himself talking rubbish. The Turin Academy crowned it as the best book written in the last four years of the nineteenth century. Clergymen seem to prefer to get their science from apologetic works only. How many, I wonder, have ever read the masterly exposition of the case for Haeckel-Haeckel's Critics Answered, by Joseph McCabe?

P. 30, lines 13–14.-"In relief of doubt."

A work entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. R. E. Welsh, a Presbyterian minister, is an attempt by an exceedingly earnest man to remove doubts concerning the Bible. There is an introductory note by the Bishop of London. The book is written in what the Bishop terms a "racy" style, and has the merit of much straightforwardness; but few well-informed, and at the same time open-minded, readers would agree with the conclusions of the author. The argument that St. Paul was a contemporary of Christ is one of the principal features; but see Chap. II., § 3, and Chap. III., § 2.

P. 31, lines 27–8.-The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

In Priests and People in Ireland, by Michael McCarthy, there is a complete exposé of the methods and results of Christian teaching in this portion of the British Isles, and a portrait of a typical Roman Catholic priest which demonstrates his elevating (?) influence. Also see Twelve Years in a Monastery and Life in a Modern Monastery, by Joseph McCabe.

P. 33, lines 32–3.-The Roman Catholic Church is more consistent.

"The Papal Church, founded, to a large extent, on superstition and ignorance, has ever been afraid of knowledge, of study, and education; hence she only consulted her own life's interests when, in the Middle Ages, she decreed knowledge to be identical with heresy, and heresy to be punishable by death." These words are quoted from The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, by the Rev. Alexander Robertson, D.D., a book accorded a flattering reception by the King of Italy in 1903. Again, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church in the first chapter of his History of England, says that, "during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been made in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor."

P. 38, line 7.-Gifts for the needy.

The exhortation to "give to the poor" is a precept of all the great religions. Indiscriminate giving was inculcated by the disciples of Christ, who were the poor, and Asiatic poor at that. The pity of it is that often more harm than good is done because the "Divine" command does not specify the deserving poor. Hence that wholesale pauperisation of which the evil effects are especially apparent among the Jews and in Oriental countries.