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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cllch6, il est film6 d partir de I'angle supdrieur gauche, de gauche h droite. et de haut en bas. en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 22t I SGIENCE^REUeiON 3SS ■^ '-V -^z ;, ■ - «T m^ £. W MacBRlbE. DSc, F.R,S. '^^■■■'P^-.t''-'^ •"• . ■'■•;•■■ • '. ■'■■'" ■'■■■■' 'T, •■■•K-'.-A <«^ . '\ '■■ :a ^•*t '■* E. M, BEKOUF RENOOr tlUtLOIMO. Con. ST. CATHJSitl^S A»D iDmyfiBftlTT SXttfillf .,->:;)^ *»•« ^.4.*^ ■^5: mn. SCIENCE AND RELIGION AX ADDRESS GIVEN TO THE McGlLL V. M.C.A. BY PROFESSOR E. W. MacBRIDE I esteem it a great honor to be invited to address you on one of the niost momentous questions ^vhich can engage the attention of thinking men, i.e., the question how far religious belief of the Christian kind or, indeed, of any kind, is compatible with the present state of human knowledge — that is, with science. Just in proportion as I consider the question important do I think it necessary to define what is meant by religious Ixdief, and what exactly is the task which I attempt to accomplish in regard to it. By religious belief I mean the belief that the Power behind the universe is a moral power working for the good of every self-conscious being in it, and, further, that for every member of the human race there lies beyond death an eternal life which shall perfect the incompleteness of the present one. These definitions, especially the latter, may seem to nu\ny people illegitimate contractions of the meaning of the word reli- gion; but I contend that they do define the minimum of religion which the present generation of mankind will ever take seriously; and as a practical man I think it a mere waste of time to con- sider the claims of anything less. In past times — and times not so very long past either — it ma^' have been possible to many to believe in and worship a God who had singled them out as they supposed for special favorable treatment, and who was credited with having the firm purpose of destroying the rest of mankind. Such a conception of God has, however, ceased to have any hold on thinking men, and so we shall have to pass it by. Again, I have heard it contended that by eternal life is meant a high and 2 noblo kind of life, not life of an enduring character, and it is fairly i)r()b;il>le that the religious ideas of many Jews were entirely bound up with the welfare of their nation, and that they had no hopes beyond the gra\c. But the Jewish religion failed, and Christianity, the leading feature of which was that it brought life and inunortality to light, taicceeded ^o it. However it may have been possible for a man like Huxley, who died at a rijie old age,^ having seen the successful accomplishment of most of his projects, to say that he considered the present life Avell worth living, even if there was no future life, yet when we consider the inuiibcr of lives ])rematiirely cut short, with powers half or not at all developed, the number of hearts broken, of hopes blighted, we shall be driven to agree with Professor .McTaggart, of Cam- bridge, when he says "that the absence of immortality would make life a ghastly farce." ^'ow, it would be the very worst kind of presumption were I to attempt in half an hour to demonstrate to you two such trem- endous propositions as the goodness of God and the immortality of man. , 1 nujy say at once that I do not think that any demons- tration can be found which is incapable of being questioned. All I can do is this : I can confess to you that I myself, having been brought up in the strict religious ideas of Puritanism, and having clung to them for a long time after I had commenced the study of science, found my traditional faith crumble to dust l)efore the difficulties raised by the new knoAvledge, and that after a long ])eriod of unrest it has been possible for, me to fight my way back to a hope that God and immortality are what Christ represented them to be. I can give you an outline of the reasons which seemed to me to point to this conclusion; and it may be that they may help some of you to similar conclusions. After all, however, as Balfour has said, ''nothing waxes so quickly old as apologetic except criticism" — in the long run every man — at least every thinking man — has to construct his own aiX)logetic. It may, however, be that I may start trains of thought which may lead some of you to develop a much more satisfactory apologetic than my own. Before, however, \ye try to develop any apologetic, let us endeavor to look our difficulties fairly in the face. Have we any reason to believe in the existence of God at all? Has not; a G«mian i)hilos(>pher said : "God did not create man, but man ( 3 ci'eated God and all tlie baleful ccnsoquenecs that flow ti.civfroin' Even if God exists, must that lie is limited eitl we not with John Stuart Mill bel levc tion), in His pity ? Does not ''nature, red lor in His power (or if that is a contradic I'avine, shriek against our in tooth and claw witl creed" of an All-.Merciful i A the doctrine of evolution be true, what riiiht 1 1 ii'ain, if . ,, . ^ .;,,"" ~~ ' """"^ "^^'"^ ''''^'^ ^^'^ <^'> believe m the existence, still less in the immortality of our souls i Are we not descended through innumerable generations from organ- isms as simple as Amoeba, to which it is absurd to attribute souls i If we endeavor to escape from the dilemma by ass(>rting that all animals have souls, we are faced with the difficulty tl.at many of the lower animals are capable „f division inh> a numbcT of parts, M-lnch can lead independent existences, and it will be somewhat difficult for anyone to maintain that a soul is capable of mechanical division into two other souls. Finallv, does not physiology teach ns that all manifestations of soul-life' are caused by changes in brain substance, which are chemical and physical in their nature ; indeed, that all the phenom(>na of life are caused by chemical changes in somewhat, complicateut jusr as the biologist stands on the back of the chemist, so the ciliemist stands on the back of the physicist, who supplies him with the fundamental properties of matter, and with the biws of motion. Therefore, we approach the physicist with ..nr meta- physical questions. ''What are matter, space, and timr-'^" Xot one of these can be defined except in relati.m to a fonrtli funda- mental, namely, 7 myself the subject. :\ratter is the supposed cause of my sensations. Space and time, as Kant shr.wed, can only refer to my experience. If thought of as existing apart trom me, they involve contradiotions, therefore, in exi)]ainiiig the m. m «e or wl.at is tho samo tlun^^ in analysing my experience, 1 tnid that / myself am an tilti,nate wliicli cannot, bo resolved i.to anything else; the other nllimates can only he point out that the h(li( t i,i the existence of a soul aiul the belief in ev(jhition, nay, ( v( n in tlu- belief of our own birth, rests upon very dilV- erent kinds of evidence. The belief in the existonee of a suul is a pos'.ulate of all knowUdge, as in Euclid's postulate, th;:t two Btrai/^ht lines cannot enclose a Kspace in •:eonio!ry; unl-ss this be admitted no geometrical proiM)sition ciin be provid, tS(., nulesi the r( ality of the soul is. assumed notiiing can be kiiown — know- ing, in fact, has no meaning, for, in what sense could dead atoms be said to '"know" each (.ther^ iJut when 1 take my little l>.y un my knee and tell him that something hapj)ened Ik fore he was born, and he turns to me and asks with wondering eyes, "\/!irre was I then?", 1 feel at once that one's lieginning in time is uo self- evident proposition. The belief in one's birth is an inference from what people around us tell ns — the belief, that is to say, in the existence of a stretch of time to which our consciousness has no rehition. It is not a jnattcr of consciousness, but is really merely a reasonable, well-grounded hypot,hesis. So, too, the doctrine of evolution is a reasonable deduction from fossils and from the resemblance between th(* Im-kHcs of other animals and our own bodies. Xay, more, the existence of other men and Avomen, in the sense of the belief that they have souls like our own is not self-evident, it is a splendidly gronndcMlhypothesis ; but the fact that it is an hypothesis is shown by the action of our forefathers in endowing trees, fountains, waves, and wind with sonls — a jwsition which no one wonld now maintain. Xow, the evidence on which the hypotheses rest, which ai)pears to contra- dict the immortality of the soul, is not to be compared for cer- tainty w[th that on which the belief in immortality rests. The latter, Avhen carefnlly scrutinized, is the implied pre-su])position of all knowledge. The fonncr consists of deductions from de- tails of that knowledge. Let ns, therefore, avoid letting wl^at we know be shaken by what we do not know. ]\[any attempts at reconciling these difficulties have been made, bnt T forljear entering into them now lest yon should confuse the .solid basis on which the belief in the reality of the subject or soul is founded with the hazy, unsatisfactory nature of these hypotheses. I pre- fer to recognize truth on both sides of the contradiction and to -*► believe that when faith is replaced by sight the contradiction will vanish. I do not flatter mjsolf that I have removed all difficulties ±rom your nrnds on this most fundamental of all subjects. T do honestly thmk, however, that careful thoughi and study will lead you to my position in this matter. Such a jewel as a well- grounded hehef in immortality is not to be won without hard work. Supposing, for tlie present, that you have reached the posi- tion which I have outlined, let us return to the great quest/ion: l^oes the Power behind the universe care for man ?" Now if we have souls. God must have the essential qualities of our soiils He of course, has infinitely more— Ho is superhuman, but let us observe txiafc this means at least human. Herbert Spencer and others of his school have talked of the absurdity of fasten- ing on the Supreme the limitations of personality, as if consci- ousness, will, and emotion were limitations, and as if by divestin- the Supreme Power of tliese we are enlarging our conceptions of It. In this respect that fascinating philosopher, Hegel, has done ns great service. I am far from su]>ix.sing that he has proved that wonderful dialectical ascent of his from the cateo-ory of pure ■being to the category of absolute spirit— the Hegelian God, in whom Ave live and move and have our being— but on many points the correctness of his arguments is generally admitted. Now, one of Hegel's most valuable points is that the source of all error and contradiction is abstraction; that is, considerin^r things as if they existed independently of one another, whereas, they all exist together in one universe. Thus, a physicist con- sidering only physics is certainly abstracting, and so is a biologist considering only biology. Owing, as I said before, to limitations of time, we are forced to abstract, but Hegel presses on us that m virtue of that fact we can only reach partial truth. Now, all philosophers— those who o]ipuse, and those who agree with Hegel know that we are never directly conscious of things. We have a confused mass of sensations pouring in on us and our mind reduces these to order by applying to them certain fundamental conceptions called rategories. Such are, for instances being time, space, substance, cause, and, Hegel would add, personality. Hegel asserts that each of the lower categories taken by itself is absurd. Kant had already shown I his for space and time, whilst J 4 i*f 1 V 1 Hegel shows It for hemg, substance, and cause. He asserts that they are really abstractions of the higher idea of personality. ^ow, this idea of HegePs is confirmed by the actual history o± these conceptions in human thought, for they originated as evaporations and emasculations of the idea of personality. The Idea that in a thing there is a substance which would be unaltered %vere all the qualities to change is just the pale reflection of our immediate knowledge of the unity and persistence of our own souls— It IS a kind of soul which we impute to things. In early Imman history a soul like thait of man was supposed to reside in all surrounding objects; in this period of animism, as it is called, the category o± personality was used to interpret practically all phenomena. Similarly, the idea of cause is derived from our con- sciousness of our ow" will-power and, therefore, in denying con- sciousness and emot. . to God we are abstractinu' from the idea of personality and so limiting Ilim, and the moment this is clearlv seen the absurdity of the proceeding will be manifest. . /^.'^^' "/"St, therefore, have consciousness, will, and feeling, but IS Ills will good or is it cruel? m^y does :N-ature out of fatty secils only bring but one to bear ? Why is there pain and woe and misery in the world? The older theologian would have answered, -JJecause of sin." Xow, I frankly admit that this ex- planal^.on is utterly unsatisfactory to me. I Avill go further, and ea,^ that the continued official reception of such dogmas is the cause of the alienation of the younger generation from our eJiurchos. The old dogmas of Calvinism, which are not peculiar to the Presbyterian Church, but in some form or other have been accepted by every branch of Christianity, can be traced back to Paul, the Rabbinical Jew." thaf^^i/"^**^?^.°*^ ^^^}^ doctrines may be mentioned: 7«7 the doctrine madVa bTrJSn\^'' descended from a single pair, with whom Goci made a bargain (covenant), and upon their default, not onlv thev fsiS m-idP n . '^°'*"°^. °^ *^^ ^'^'^ "^t'o"; f^i« the outcome of heaven and earth wnTT*^ 'F^i^' '''^"^^ *° ^he Almighty Maker of rrfnnvF.f , ^ ,^^^ allegorlzed by Paul to apply to that portion of ZnS . ^^'?, "^^"^^ eventually yield to Christirity. all the ?est being devoted to utter destruction, exactly as all nations other t-han the Jewish bT h '\ m%h?v'';.f tErn'V" ^T ^^'^^"- *■"*"'•« *'^te utter destrucTJon nf wMoi, ni? ^' ^^i the doctrme of a "law of God" in the forensic sense. ff'^'o^ ^P^Lut%?am''th " fa;t°r^--r'rr t^ "f 7^*'^". '^'"""'^^^^ QT«r.i«c, "^P ti 1 1. . V 1^ transgresaur or his substitute. Our ous ex- ure and 1 inies of Jesus the Messiah." 10 The simple fact that suffering existed millions of years be- fore man was on the eartli iole were written in any other way than other books; they show us that these books were compiled from documents of varying degrees of accuracy, and that many of them contain large inter polat.ons by later hands. All admit, however, that the Gospels, especially the first three, give us the earliest recollections of the teachings ot Jesus Christ; give us, in a word, a picture of the impression which He made on His first followers. Xow, if we try to cull from this impression what Christ taught and how He lived, we see at once that He tauglit the highest socia virtues which, if followed, would weld all mankind inlSone tamily. He further declared, that in teachiu- these virtues He was declaring the will of God, that He was sent into the world for this purjiose; and that whosoever was willin- to trv to obey His commands would learn for himself that they were tlie will of God. x\ow, these are tremendous assertions, and in a scientific v-v we naturally ask for evidence. J]ut if the human spirit be the truest picture of the All-Sui)reme which is presented to us, if it be in reality greater than the sun-which, after all, is only a gigantic hot stone— ]ust because the spirit is so much more concrete than the sun; then, if taking Christ at His word and trvino- His ex- Ijeriment, the results which He predicts will follow, if the soul thus enters on a happy and harmonious development, we have strong grounds for believing Christ did declare the laws of the soul s well-being and wai, therefore, the revelation of God. In a word, Christ vindicates His Claims, because, in response to Plis words, a n answerin g some thing rises up in our deepest conscious- *In view of the statements made about the "higher critics" bv clere-v- men and others who have commented on this address I think ?f S to rem nd the reader that th« critics are not a pack of kicked infidel but include almost every Protestant theological professor i^ Great Britain and Europe, andj it i= a rpp"p nuc-tin-n ^-f +i.^, - „v •• "Jicai onudiu of this Continent also ^ ^'^ °' ^"''' ^'^^"^ '""^ ^^°^^ ^'" ^« t''»« i .. ¥ ^ 1.3 ^1 ^ ness and in comparison with this vindication attempted external V nd.cat.on of those claims scenes to n.e snperfiuoL. Witho'it dLiplT" ''"'^''''^'" '''^^ ''''-'' ^'^'"^P^'l tlie assent of a single \V'J\!\VrT'" '" ''' v2' ''1^'""' '^''^ ^^'"^* g^* His revelation ? VVa. It not only an amplification of previons insight on the part of the prophets and sages? I think on,- mav satVly sav th' t^lfe never goi it from the contemplation of external nature: He saw ^e sparrow fall and yet believed in the goodness of God. As to His predecessors, the most orthodox person believes that Jle had forenmners; but, let any one apply the simple experimental test -take the writings of any other sage-and see whether thov will oflu'ls ''"'' ''' '' ^^'"'''^' '"^''"^' ^'••^^'^ '^'''' "" "^'^^'^^"^ Mii-acles are, }et it be freely confessed, a great stund>ling block in the present day. We must remember tbat howevei^ much Christ was the revelation of the Divine, Ho exhibited that revelation m human form, and not in the human form of a twentieth-century man of culture, but in that of a Jewish peasant of two thousand years ago. By parentage Tie inherited a anguage and a stock ot common ideas, winch bad nuich of mere temporary value. It is impossible to separate between inberited Ideas and inherited language— the latter bv its very structure is a repository of ideas which are absorlxHl unconsciouslv in learn- ing the language. We must make the necessary allowance for this, just as It was necessary to translate His worcjs from Aramaic TL? «nd from Greek into English. Further, though doubtless in the Man of Sorrows the Divine Ideal glowed with such brilliance as to press into insignificance all tbat was tempor- ary, yet we have only received those rays refracted through the turbid minds of His first followers who, by their own confession, did not fully understand their .Alaster. In the age in which tbev lived, wonderful an,l magical deeds Avere supposed to occur quife frequently; and the wonderfulness of Christ's works did not arrest their attention so much as their gracious and loving char- acter. It IS quite possible that had we been witnesses of these deeds we should not have termed them n.iraculous, but have seen in them instances of the wonderful effect of mind on mind in curing ner^'ous disenses-but, of course, (his is onlv a hvpothesis. 10 this hypothesis one great exception must be made, namely, ^- 14 the resurrection from the dead. However, Ave may explain i^ the hrst chsaples believed that ti.ey .saw their MaL a£ IH^ deatl and this appearanee „f Christ was placed by them on an n terly diiferent looting. ,o the apr,<.aran^.e of a ghost or -rev- lZul\ ^ ^T:. ^'"'-'"'^ appearances would not have excited genera incrednhl.y, nor would thev liave sm-cially en- courage,! the diseipl,... Jim ,1.. appc-arance of Christ as a con- queror in spiteof Ills apparent d.-feat, raised them to such a pitch of exaltation that they were transformed from a pitiful nors for the faith. J am certain that this belief had a cause the' Clmrch '" '^^'" ''"'"'*" ''' *''" ^^'^^™tion produced Another exception must be made in the ease of the vision of Paul on the road to Danu.Hcus, for the account given in Acte is confirmed not only by the account in one of Paul's admitted letters, but still more by the whole of Paul's theology. It api>ears as if he had known little of Christ when lie was alive; for he thinks of the AI„.ster always as the Son of God in the next world. His adheren<-e lo this point of view was so ex- treme as to lead him to say in one place: ''Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. It_ is suspected that, it was in opposition to this view !that the sayings of (M.rist were <.oll(,.ted from the lips of those who had been His actual companions, and that to this opposition we owe the priceless heritage of the (icKspels. For the rest, Paul's theology was Jewish Ra])biniHm, allegorized and spiritualized it is true, but betraying its origin at every turn. Modern science and modern criticism have destroyed the whole basis of this theology, and for men nowadays it is urgent that if we are to keep our faith we should leave Paul's theology and return to Christ. One last word. I have sj,oken of the extreme difficulty of reconciling the soul's apparent beginning in time xvith its ever- astmg duration. I venture, in closing, to give a last hint as to how this dualism may eventually be resolved. What if the suc- cession of things in time l)e itself an illusion and things eternally are, and only appear to succeed one another ? If, to use the sub- lime language of Hegel, "The accomplishment of the Eternal 15 purpose consists merely in "removing the illusion wliicli makes it seem as yet unaccomplished"? Or to take Browning: — "All that is at all Lasts ever, past recall, Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure. What entered into thee That was, is, and shall be. Time's wheel runs back or stops. Potter and clay endure." Note A.— The Resurrection of Christ. What we are entitled to conclude from a scientific review of the evidence, is that something happened which made the disciples believe that their Master had conquered death, and which tilled them with joy and courage. As to what that something was, opinions will tliifer. Those to whom belief in miracles causes no difficulty will accept the story as given in the Gospels— that Christ revived from the sleep of death and came out of the tomb Those who realize what a tremendous amount of minute and careful observation would be required to establish an occurrence contrary to all experience, will incline to the belief that what was v& ichsafed to the disciples was a series of telepathic visions of ex- traordinary hrilliancy; since there is a fair amount of evidence that such visions occasionally occur. Note B. — The Vision of Paul. The reality of the vision of Paul is accepted by Wernle, one of the most advanced critics, in his book "Die Anfange unserer Religion." As to whether this vision was telepathic, or purely subjective, we have no means of deciding. Note C. — The Teachings of Paul. The references to this subject are merely meant to assert that Paul's way of looking at things was conditionedi by his Rabbinical training, and is totally foreign to the modern point of view. It is not denied that Paul iu his day did immense service to Christianity, which he propa- gated chiefly amongst the liberal Jews of the Dispersion and those philosophic heathen who had already been attracted by the spiritual character of the Jewish conception of God. To such people Rabbinical thought-forms vare familiar, and Paul's teaching was admirably adapted for this purpose. The evangelical party at the present day have made frantic attempts to make Christ responsible for Paul's teachings, but even supposing that Paul's vision is placed on the same level as the daily intercourse of the twelve with the Man Jesus Christ (a position which no scientific man would admit for a moment) Paul never asserted that he received more than a brief message from Chri.st, directing him CO seek instructions from the other disciples.