The Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 | Page 2

Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we
wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate
now pending between science and theology. We wish to review the
posture and temper of the parties; and particularly to refer to the tone
and spirit of the religious press and the pulpit, respecting the alleged
discoveries and claims of science, and their bearing upon the religious
opinion of the time.
Moreover, in passing, the present writer begs permission to say that he

speaks from the orthodox side of this question; he hails from the
orthodox camp; he wears the clerical vesture of the Scottish worthies;
and is affiliated theologically with Knox and Chalmers, with Edwards
and Alexander, with the New York Observer and the Princeton Review.
This much we beg to say, that what follows in these pages may be fully
understood.
No one who has been attending to the subject with any degree of
interest can have failed to observe that science, in her investigations
upon the grand and momentous themes which have absorbed her
attention in these latter years, has exhibited, and does still exhibit, a
steady and well-defined purpose, and has pursued it with a singularly
calm, sober, unimpassioned, yet resolute temper. Its posture is firm,
steady, self-poised, conscious of rectitude, and anticipative of veritable
and valuable results. Its spirit, though eager, is quiet; though
enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed
with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object is
to interrogate nature. It stands at the shrine and awaits the response of
the oracle. It would fain interpret and make intelligible the wondrous
hieroglyphics of this universe, and specially the mystic characters
traced by the long-revolving ages upon the stony tablets of this planet
Earth. It has in the first instance no creed to support, no dogmas to
verify, no meaning to foist upon nature; its sole and single query is,
What does nature teach? What is fact? What is truth? What has
occurred in the past annals of this planet? What is the actual and true
history of its bygone ages, and of the dwellers therein? These are its
questions, addressed to nature by such methods as experience has
taught will reach her ear, and it does not hesitate to take nature's answer.
It does not shrink, and quake, and grow pale lest the response should
overturn some ancient notion. It does not dread to hear the response,
lest morals or religion should be thereby imperilled. It boldly and
resolutely takes the teaching of nature, whatever it may be. Its
conviction is that truth never can be anything else than truth; that fact
can never be anything else than fact; and that no two truths or two facts
in God's universe can be in hopeless and irreconcilable contradiction.
In this spirit the genuine sons of science have exhibited, what has

seemed to some, a heartless indifference whether their discoveries or
theories harmonized with the Scriptures or not, or affected the received
opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals.
They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such
direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with
long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the actual
story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest they
should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel
important modifications in the lectures of learned Professors. This was
no care of theirs. They discovered facts, they did not make them.
Now with all due respect for the opinions and feelings of religious
people, we hesitate not to affirm that this spirit is the only true one in
scientific men. Conceding, as we must, the supremacy of facts in their
own sphere, and granting that, as mundane and human affairs now
stand, the evidence of the senses, purged from fraud and illusion, must
be held to be conclusive, we cheerfully award to scientific men the
largest liberty to pursue their inquiries in matters of fact, utterly
regardless of the havoc which may be thereby wrought among the
traditional, beliefs of men. In no other way can science be true to
herself. She is the child of induction. She can acknowledge no authority
but what has been enthroned by inductive reasoning; and were she to
adjust her conclusions, and garble her facts, to suit the faiths, beliefs,
prejudices, or traditions of men, she would thereby falsify her inmost
life, and stultify herself before the world. And in this connection we
may premise that we regard as worthy of all commendation the
straightforward and unembarrassed manner in which Sir Charles Lyell
pursues his inquiries into the geological evidences of the antiquity of
man. He could not have been unaware that he was striking a ponderous
blow at one of the