In these times, also, the development of temporal and material prosperity with the intellectual mood which is involved in that affects the attitude of the age toward the Bible.Sometimes it is spoken of as a scientific age over against the earlier philosophical ages.Perhaps that will do for a rough statement of the facts.It is the age of experiment, of trying things out, and there naturally works into men a feeling that the things that will yield to the most material scientific experimentation are the things about which they can be certain and which are of real value.That naturally involves a good deal of appreciation of the present, and calls for the improvement of the conditions of present life first of all.It looks moreimportant to see that a man is well fed, well housed, well clothed, and well educated than that he should have the interests of eternity pressed on his attention.That is a comparatively late feeling.It issues partly from the fact that this is a scientific age, when science has had its attention turned to the needs of humanity.
Another result of our scientific age is the magnifying of the natural, while the Bible frankly asserts the supernatural.No effort to get the supernatural out of the Bible, in order to make it entirely acceptable to the man who scouts the supernatural, has thus far proved successful.Of course, the supernatural can be taken out of the Bible; but it will destroy the Bible.Nor is there much gain in playing with words and insisting that everything is supernatural or that everything is natural.There is a difference between the two, and in an age which insists upon nature or natural laws or forces or events as all- sufficient it is almost inevitable that the Bible should lose its hold, at least temporarily.
Regarding all this there are some things that need to be said.For one thing, this, too, is a passing condition.As a matter of fact, men are not creatures of time.They actually have eternal connections, and the great outstanding facts which have always made eternity of importance continue.The fact is that men continue to die, and that the men who are left behind cannot avoid the sense of mystery and awe which is involved in that fact.The fact also is that the human emotions cannot be explained on the lower basis, and the only reason men think they can be is because they have in the back of their minds the old explanations which they cast into the lower forms, deceiving themselves into thinking they are new ideas when they are not.
It ought to be added that the Bible has greatly suffered in all its history at the hands of men who have believed in it and have fought in its behalf.Many of the controversies which were hottest were needless and injurious.All the folly has not been on one side.Some one referred the other day to a list of more than a hundred scientific theories which were proposed at the beginning of the last century and abandoned at the end of it.Scientific men are feeling their way, many of them reverently and devoutly, some of them rather blatantly and with a readiness for publication, which hastensthem into notoriety.But there has been enough folly on both sides to make every one go cautiously.It has been remarked that in Dr.Draper's book The Conflict Between Science and Religion he makes science appear as a strong- limbed angel of God whereas religion is always a great ass.The title of the book itself is not fair.In no proper understanding of the words can there be any conflict between science and religion.There can be a conflict, as Dr.Andrew D.White puts it, between science and theology.There can certainly be contest between scientists and religionists.Science and religion have no conflict.
It is interesting to observe how far back most of the supposed conflicts actually lie.There is no warfare now; and, while our fathers one or two generations ago felt that they must fly to the defense of religion against the attacks of science, no man wastes his strength doing that to-day.That period has passed.The trouble is that some good people do not know it, and are just fond enough of a bit of a tussle to keep up the fighting in the mountain-passes while out in the plain the main armies have laid down their arms and are busy tilling the soil.
The period of conflict is past, partly because we are learning to distinguish between the Bible as it really is and certain long-established ideas about the Bible which came from other sources and have become attached to it until it seemed to sustain them.The proper doctrine of evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible.The great Dr.Hodge declared that the consistent Darwinian must be an atheist.For that matter, Shelley defended himself by saying that, of course, "the consistent Newtonian must necessarily be an atheist." But fifty years have made great changes in the doctrine of evolution, and the old scare has been over for some time.Newton is honored in the church quite as much as in the university, and Darwin is not a name to frighten anybody.Understanding evolution better and knowing the Bible better, the two do not jangle out of tune so badly but that harmony is promised.
