Religion and science : their independence of each other and their mutual relations / by a Physician.
- Date:
- 1851
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Religion and science : their independence of each other and their mutual relations / by a Physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![she cannot accelerate nor aid its progress and the develop- ment of its truths, so can science, without any pretensions of possessing the power to establish the truths of revealed reli- gion, illustrate to the reason of man many of its sublime revelations, and prepare the way, in many cases, for its recep- tion in the heart and affections. Natural religion, however pure and elevated, may be held to be only natural science sublimated to a metaphysical or theoretic abstraction, and therefore it may only be considered as ce a voice crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way/1 So, therefore, natural reli- gion, with the facts and phenomena on which it is built, may dispose the contemplative and longing mind to receive and embrace that message of heaven-born truth, which all human research could never discover. Bishop Hall, on this point, has well said, “ Human learning well improved makes us capable of divine. There is no knowledge whereof God is not the Author. He would never have bestowed any gift that should lead us away from Himself. It is an ignorant conceit that inquiry into nature should make men atheistical. No man is so apt to see the star of Christ as a disciple of philo- sophy. If these men [the wise men] had been acquainted with all the other stars of heaven, and not seen the star of Christ, they had had but light enough to lead them into utter darkness. Philosophy without this star is but the wisp of error.”—Contemplations, vol. iii. Religion, being a matter of faith and not of observation, needs not to be confirmed by any of the facts and disco- veries of science; therefore many persons and tribes are directly, on appeal, it may be said, willing and sincere reci- pients of the truths of Christianity — their own hearts, from their inward convictions and experience, forthwith yielding a ready assent to the heavenly declaration. There are, how- ever, multitudes of our fellow-men who require to be reasoned down from their own theoretic notions, and to be led up through the God of nature to the God of the gospel. The history of many educated minds in civilised countries, and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28043686_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
