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Introduction
We live in a new
age. Old patterns of thought are rapidly dissolving; new
ways of living and thinking are revolutionizing the life
of mankind. Men are more restless under ancient evils;
more hopeful of finding the right solution to age old
riddles. In other days it was enough to say that a given
custom had descended from the forefathers; or that the
ancients had tried unsuccessfully to solve a certain
problem. But to day the spirit of man soars upward, and he
will not allow the ghosts of the long ago to block the
road along which his aspirations and hopes take their
march toward the achievement of his legitimate and worthy
desires.
The heart of religion is
still a sacred place—the sanctuary of God. In spite of
the earthquakes and storms of science it ever stands
inviolate, untouched by profane hand, undisturbed by the
roar of an agitated world. Its holy altar fires are
unfanned by the wild winds of controversy; the deluge of
materialism dampens not the burning coals of its altar. No
spear of science has ever thrust through its enveloping
curtains. The test tubs and the microscope have never
invaded its privacy. In religion's calm heart of mystery
there is a silence as deep, a peace as serene as that
which prevailed in the days when Abraham and Moses and
Isaiah penetrated into the secret of divine fellowship; or
when John and Paul and Stephen followed Jesus into the
mystical experience of an intimate knowledge of God. Now
as in the olden time, the foundation of God standeth sure.
In other words,
notwithstanding the assertions of skeptics, science has
absolutely left untouched and unchanged the great
fundamental truths of man's personal relation to God. I
think proof of this statement is found in the fact that
Copernicus, the founder of the modern Copernican system of
astronomy, was a devout parish priest; Sir Isaac Newton,
the discoverer of the law of gravitation and of the mighty
laws of celestial mechanics—said to have been the
greatest of all human minds—was a devout Christian, and
a writer upon the Book of Revelation. Michael Faraday was
one of the founders of modern physical science. Of him
Professor Tyndall said: " Taking him for all and all,
I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday was the
greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever
seen." Michael Faraday was a member of a small
religious society in London which practiced footwashing
and the holy kiss. In fact he was an elder in that church.
Coming down to modern times, the great electrical genius,
Steinmetz, published only a short time before his death an
account of his belief in God. Professor Millikan, the
discoverer of the cosmic rays, is a religious man; and so
are a number of other foremost scientific men today.
We are therefore able to
say with assurance that modern science has not even
remotely touched nor injured the great religious truths of
man's spiritual relation to God. But it has tended to
create a new attitude toward the business and social
problems of the church. Science has done this in two ways:
it has suggested that the business, i.e. the material
business of the church, be conducted more expeditiously,
economically, and efficiently; and by the examples of its
own success in other fields it has encouraged the church
to believe that by the use of a right method difficult and
hitherto impossible things may be accomplished regardless
of the fact that they have been [unsuccessfully attempted
time out of mind. Working in the dispassionate and
unprejudiced light of a progressive and achieving age men
of the church are beginning to believe that somehow the
problem of her disunity can be solved.
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