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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/650

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632
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which include alike the inward and the outward life of man; within which lie the real instruments of his training, and where he is to learn how to think, to act, to be.

I will now proceed to notice briefly the last page of Professor Huxley's paper, in which he drops the scientist and becomes simply the man. I read it with deep interest, and with no small sympathy. In touching upon it, I shall make no reference (let him forgive me the expression) to his "damnatory clauses," or to his harmless menace, so deftly conveyed through the prophet Micah, to the public peace.

The exaltation of Religion as against Theology is at the present day not only so fashionable, but usually so domineering and contemptuous, that I am grateful to Professor Huxley for his frank statement (p. 459) that Theology is a branch of science; nor do I in the smallest degree quarrel with his contention that Religion and Theology ought not to be confounded. We may have a great deal of Religion with very little Theology; and a great deal of Theology with very little Religion. I feel sure that Professor Huxley must observe with pleasure how strongly practical, ethical, and social is the general tenor of the three synoptic Gospels; and how the appearance in the world of the great doctrinal Gospel was reserved to a later stage, as if to meet a later need, when men had been toned anew by the morality and, above all, by the life of our Lord.

I am not, therefore, writing against him, when I remark upon the habit of treating Theology with an affectation of contempt. It is nothing better, I believe, than a mere fashion; having no more reference to permanent principle than the mass of ephemeral fashions that come from Paris have with the immovable types of Beauty. Those who take for the burden of their song "Respect Religion, but despise Theology," seem to me just as rational as if a person were to say "Admire the trees, the plants, the flowers, the sun, moon, or stars, but despise Botany, and despise Astronomy." Theology is ordered knowledge; representing in the region of the intellect what religion represents in the heart and life of man. And this religion, Mr. Huxley says a little further on, is summed up in the terms of the prophet Micah (vi. 8): "Do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." I forbear to inquire whether every addition to this—such, for instance, as the Beatitudes—is (N. C. p. 460) to be proscribed. But I will not dispute that in these words is conveyed the true ideal of religious discipline and attainment. They really import that identification of the will which is set out with such wonderful force in the very simple words of the "Paradiso"—

In la sua volontade è nostra pace,

and which no one has more beautifully described than (I think) Charles Lamb: "He gave his heart to the Purifier, his will to the Will that governs the universe." It maybe we shall find that Christianity itself is in some sort a scaffolding, and that the final building is a pure and