Natural Law in the Spiritual World | Page 5

it speaks to Religion with a twofold
purpose. In the first place it offers to corroborate Theology, in the
second to purify it.
If the removal of suspicion from Theology is of urgent moment, not
less important is the removal of its adulterations. These suspicions,
many of them at least, are new; in a sense they mark progress. But the
adulterations are the artificial accumulations of centuries of
uncontrolled speculation. They are the necessary result of the old
method and the warrant for its revision--they mark the impossibility of
progress without the guiding and restraining hand of Law. The felt
exhaustion of the former method, the want of corroboration for the old
evidence, the protest of reason against the monstrous overgrowths
which conceal the real lines of truth, these summon us to the search for
a surer and more scientific system. With truths of the theological order,
with dogmas which often depend for their existence on a particular
exegesis, with propositions which rest for their evidence upon a balance
of probabilities, or upon the weight of authority; with doctrines which
every age and nation may make or unmake, which each sect may
tamper with, and which even the individual may modify for himself, a
second court of appeal has become an imperative necessity.
Science, therefore, may yet have to be called upon to arbitrate at some
points between conflicting creeds. And while there are some
departments of Theology where its jurisdiction cannot be sought, there
are others in which Nature may yet have to define the contents as well
as the limits of belief.

What I would desire especially is a thoughtful consideration of the
method. The applications ventured upon here may be successful or
unsuccessful. But they would more than satisfy me if they suggested a
method to others whose less clumsy hands might work it out more
profitably. For I am convinced of the fertility of such a method at the
present time. It is recognized by all that the younger and abler minds of
this age find the most serious difficulty in accepting or retaining the
ordinary forms or belief. Especially is this true of those whose culture
is scientific. And the reason is palpable. No man can study modern
Science without a change coming over his view of truth. What
impresses him about Nature is its solidity. He is there standing upon
actual things, among fixed laws. And the integrity of the scientific
method so seizes him that all other forms of truth begins to appear
comparatively unstable. He did not know before that any form of truth
could so hold him; and the immediate effect is to lessen his interest in
all that stands on other bases. This he feels in spite of himself; he
struggles against it in vain; and he finds perhaps to his alarm that he is
drifting fast into what looks at first like pure Positivism. This is an
inevitable result of the scientific training. It is quite erroneous to
suppose that science ever overthrows Faith, if by that is implied that
any natural truth can oppose successfully any single spiritual truth.
Science cannot overthrow Faith; but it shakes it. Its own doctrines,
grounded in Nature, are so certain, that the truths of Religion, resting to
most men on Authority, are felt to be strangely insecure. The difficulty,
therefore, which men of Science feel about Religion is real and
inevitable, and in so far as Doubt is a conscientious tribute to the
inviolability of Nature it is entitled to respect.
None but those who have passed through it can appreciate the radical
nature of the change wrought by Science in the whole mental attitude
of its disciples. What they really cry out for in Religion is a new
standpoint--a standpoint like their own. The one hope, therefore, for
Science is more Science. Again, to quote Bacon--we shall hear enough
from the moderns by-and-by--"This I dare affirm in knowledge of
Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it,
doth dispose the opinion to atheism; but, on the other side, much
natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's

minds to religion."[2]
The application of similia similibus curantur was never more in point.
If this is a disease, it is the disease of Nature, and the cure is more
Nature. For what is this disquiet in the breasts of men but the loyal fear
that Nature is being violated? Men must oppose with every energy they
possess what seems to them to oppose the eternal course of things. And
the first step in their deliverance must be not to "reconcile" Nature and
Religion, but to exhibit Nature in Religion. Even to convince them that
there is no controversy between Religion and Science is insufficient. A
mere flag of