ture and of natural
law. The conflict of science, when historically analyzed, is found to
have been fourfold--with the Church, with theology, with superstition,
and with false or imperfect science and philosophy. Religious men may
have identified themselves from time to time with these opponents, but
that is all; and much more frequently the opposition has been by bad
men more or less professing religious objects. Organizations calling
themselves "the Church," and whose warrant from the Bible is often of
the slenderest, have denounced and opposed and persecuted new
scientific truths; but they have just as often denounced the Bible
itself, and religious doctrines founded on it. Theology claims to be
itself one of the sciences, and as such it is necessarily imperfect
and progressive, and may at any time be more or less in conflict with
other sciences; but theology is not religion, and may often have very
little in common either with true religion or the Bible. When
discussions arise between theology and other sciences, it is only a
pity that either side should indulge in what has been called the
_odium theologicum_, but which is unfortunately not confined to
divines. Superstition, considered as the unreasonable fear of natural
agencies, is a passive rather than an active opponent of science. But
revelation, which affirms unity, law, and a Father's hand in nature,
is the deadly foe of superstition, and no people who have been readers
of the Bible and imbued with its spirit have ever been found ready to
molest or persecute science. Work of this sort has been done only by
the ignorant, superstitious, and priest-ridden votaries of systems
which withhold the Bible from the people, and detest it as much as
they dislike science. Perhaps the most troublesome opposition to
science, or rather to the progress of science, has sprung from the
tenacity with which men hold to old ideas. These, which may have been
at one time the best science attainable, root themselves in popular
literature, and even in learned bodies and in educational books and
institutions. They become identified with men's conceptions both of
nature and religion, and modify their interpretations of the Bible
itself. It thus becomes a most difficult matter to wrench them from
men's minds, and their advocates are too apt to invoke in their
defense political, social, and ecclesiastical powers, and to seek to
support them by the authority of revelation, when this may per