History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom | Page 4

liberally aided every form of Christian effort which he found going on
about him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library
which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen of the
town--Catholic and Protestant. As for myself, I had been bred a
churchman, had recently been elected a trustee of one church college,
and a professor in another; those nearest and dearest to me were
devoutly religious; and, if I may be allowed to speak of a matter so
personal to my self, my most cherished friendships were among deeply
religious men and women, and my greatest sources of enjoyment were
ecclesiastical architecture, religious music, and the more devout forms
of poetry. So, far from wishing to injure Christianity, we both hoped to
promote it; but we did not confound religion with sectarianism, and we
saw in the sectarian character of American colleges and universities as
a whole, a reason for the poverty of the advanced instruction then given
in so many of them.
It required no great acuteness to see that a system of control which, in
selecting a Professor of Mathematics or Language or Rhetoric or
Physics or Chemistry, asked first and above all to what sect or even to
what wing or branch of a sect he belonged, could hardly do much to
advance the moral, religious, or intellectual development of mankind.
The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent that
we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and anticipated no
opposition from any source.

As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether to be
more astonished or amused at our simplicity.
Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it confronted us at
every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the State--from the
good Protestant bishop who proclaimed that all professors should be in
holy orders, since to the Church alone was given the command, "Go,
teach all nations," to the zealous priest who published a charge that
Goldwin Smith--a profoundly Christian scholar --had come to Cornell
in order to inculcate the "infidelity of the Westminster Review"; and
from the eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the
"atheistic and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the
perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz,
the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching
Darwinism and atheism" in the new institution.
As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced into
various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly warned
their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity," and
finally against the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted pastors
endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the
defensive, and, in answer to various attacks from pulpits and religious
newspapers, attempted to allay the fears of the public. "Sweet
reasonableness" was fully tried. There was established and endowed in
the university perhaps the most effective Christian pulpit, and one of
the most vigorous branches of the Christian Association, then in the
United States; but all this did nothing to ward off the attack. The clause
in the charter of the university forbidding it to give predominance to the
doctrines of any sect, and above all the fact that much prominence was
given to instruction in various branches of science, seemed to prevent
all compromise, and it soon became clear that to stand on the defensive
only made matters worse. Then it was that there was borne in upon me
a sense of the real difficulty-- the antagonism between the theological
and scientific view of the universe and of education in relation to it;
therefore it was that, having been invited to deliver a lecture in the
great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, I took as my subject
The Battlefields of Science, maintaining this thesis which follows:
In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest
of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have

been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science, and
invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific
investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages
may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the
highest good both of religion and science.
The lecture was next day published in the New York Tribune at the
request of Horace Greeley, its editor, who was also one of the Cornell
University trustees. As a result of this widespread publication and of
sundry attacks which it elicited, I was asked to maintain my thesis
before various university associations and literary clubs; and I shall
always remember with gratitude that among those who stood by me
and presented me on the lecture platform with words