.

CHAPTER XIII.

SCIENCE, OR FAITH?

"Faith is destined to be left behind in the onward march of the human
intellect. It belongs to an infantile stage of intellectual development,
when experience, dependent on testimony, becomes the slave of credulity.
Children and childish nations are prone to superstition. Religion
belongs properly to such. Hence the endless controversies of religious
sects. But as man advances into the knowledge of the physical sciences,
and becomes familiarized with mathematical demonstration and scientific
experiment, he demands substantial proofs for all kinds of knowledge,
and rejects that which is merely matter of faith. The certainties of
science succeed the controversies of creeds. Science thus becomes the
grave of religion, as religion is vulgarly understood. But science gives
a new and better religion to the world. Instead of filling men's minds
with the vague terrors of an unknown futurity, it directs us to the best
modes of improving this life."--"This life being the first in certainty,
give it the first place in importance; and by giving human duties in
reference to men the _precedence_, secure that all interpretations of
spiritual duty shall be in harmony with human progress."--"Nature refers
us to science for help, and to humanity for sympathy; love to the lovely
is our only homage, study our only praise, quiet submission to the
inevitable our duty; and truth is our only worship."--"Our _knowledge_
is confined to this life; and _testimony_, and _conjecture_, and
_probability_, are all that can be set forth in regard to
another."--"Preach nature and science, morality and art; _nature, the
only subject of knowledge_; morality, the harmony of action; art, the
culture of the individual and society."[322]

Or, if you will insist upon preaching religion, support it "with such
proofs as accompany physical science. This I have always loved; for I
never find it deceives me. I rest upon it with entire conviction. There
is no mistake, and can be no dispute in mathematics. And if a revelation
comes from God, why have we not such evidence for it as mathematical
demonstration?"

Such is the language now used by a large class of half-educated people,
who, deriving their philosophy from Comte, and their religion from the
_Westminster Review_, invite us to spend our Sabbaths in the study of
nature in the fields and museums, turn our churches into laboratories,
exchange our Bibles for ency