ruthlessly stamped out; no thought was allowed but that which defended the Church doctrines. The pagan systems were regarded as impious; Hypatia, distinguished lecturer on philosophy, was murdered by a mob of monks in 441; the great schools of Athens were closed by order of the Christian Emperor Justinian, in 529.1 There followed the long slumber of the Dark Ages, wherein the intellect, having no free play, was the bounden slave of dogma.

But the restless spirit of man could not forever be bound by these chains. We have noted how in the sixteenth century a widespread revolt occurred against ecclesiastical tyranny and corruption, and the Northern nations especially began to seek an altered basis for their religion. Abandoning ecclesiastical authority, they retained the authority of the Scriptures, which offered as safe a haven to the spirit as the authority of Church and Council, but allowed far greater opportunity for individual interpretation and construction. The classic Greek texts had already been reintroduced into Europe, where they had been almost forgotten, through the Mohammedan Arabs; and men again began to think for themselves. Slowly they ventured on the study of Nature, on invention, on exploration. The newly invented printing press spread the news of discoveries and theories, and once more enlightenment began to go forward.

Bitterly did the Church oppose every step of this progress. The newly won knowledge conflicted with some of her doctrines, the spirit of free inquiry menaced her whole system. Even the Reformers could not shake off the shackles of the old idea of authority. Luther wrote: "People give ear to an

1 "The public manifested such indifference toward these ruins of the past, that the edict was scarcely noticed. Christianity had taken possession of the Empire two centuries ago; the concrete and thrilling questions of religion, and the troubles caused by the invasions of the barbarians, superseded the serene and peaceful Oewpla." A. Weber, History of Philosophy (Eng. tr.), p. 184.

upstart astrologer who strives to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is, of course, the best way! This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." And similarly the scholarly Melancthon: "Certain men, either from the love of novelty or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves. Now it is want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it. The earth can be nowhere except in the center of the universe.' "1 Bruno was burned at the stake by Catholics, Servetus by Protestant Calvin; Galileo, under pain of death, was forced to retraction. "But the world does move!" he is said to have muttered as he left the trial chamber. Aye, verily, the world does move, and no power of authority or tradition or of persecution could stop it!

It would take too long even to summarize here the process by which, step by step, the new knowledge won its way against the Church. The story has been excellently told in Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare between Science and Theology in Christendom. One by one the conceptions of traditional Christian theology which deal with the history and nature of this world have yielded to the scientific ideas; many of the Protestant churches have revised or dropped their creeds, and kept pace in considerable measure with the new conceptions; all of them, and the Catholic Church as well, have been compelled in some degree to rephrase and reinterpret them. But every inch of the way has been fought; a huge mass of literature has been evolved in the ever1 Both quoted by Foster, op. cit., pp. 162–63.

repeated attempts to square the creeds with the advance of knowledge, and the greater part of modern philosophy has concerned itself with the reëxpressing of inherited beliefs in forms less and less obviously inconsonant therewith. Stamped and creased with these traditional forms of thought, philosophy has not been able, to any great extent, to become purely scientific, or to show the free spontaneity of the Greeks; and some of the sciences have been seriously hampered by the theological prepossessions of so many of their devotees. But science has grown, through the sheer force of truth, and through the practical usefulness of her discoveries. Scientific knowledge has become widely diffused; and the Church, in contending against it, has lost the allegiance of large numbers of her sons.

The battle has been a losing one for the Church, a gradual retreat from vantage-point to vantage-point, a steady recession of once assured dogma and concession to scientific knowledge. Stumbling and slipping, grasping at this crevice and that ledge, but sliding surely down, once it left the secure rock of an unquestioned authority, theology is coming to earth, abandoning its pretensions to a special avenue to truth, and becoming absorbed in such scientific studies as the psychology of religion and the history of religions. Meanwhile everything is confusion. Scientific knowledge has become widely diffused; but the scientific spirit, which won that knowledge and which has much yet to win out of the unknown for man, finds common comprehension and acceptance much more slowly. Facts that scholars everywhere proclaim become before long the public possession; but the spirit of impartial observation and generalization through which those facts were patiently wrested from the chaos of experience is as yet but the possession of the few. Protestant churches pretty generally accept the results of science, but not so generally her method. But not till Christianity openly wel

comes this spirit of free criticism and inquiry, and seeks to base her beliefs on as solid grounds of experience as anything else that we call knowledge, can she put an end to the long, unhappy, shameful conflict between religion and science. It is not enough to make timid expurgations and leave unremedied the fundamental mistake. Once the secure basis of revealed authority is abandoned, there is no intermediate resting place for thought until it rests on the authority of scientific knowledge.

A. D. White, History of the Warfare between Science and Theology. J. W. Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. J. B. Bury, History of Freedom of Thought. W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of Science, pt. 1. A. Sabatier, Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit. R. M. Wenley, Modern Thought and the Crisis in Belief, II. W. F. Adeney, A Century's Progress, chap. IV. G. B. Foster, Finality of the Christian Religion, chap. v. J. T. Shotwell, Religious Revolution of Today. G. L. Dickinson, Religion, A Criticism and Forecast, chap. II. J. R. Seeley, Natural Religion, pt. 1, chap. 1. K. Pearson, Grammar of Science, chap. 1. T. H. Huxley, Science and Hebrew Tradition, chap. I. G. Forester, Faith of an Agnostic, chaps. II-III. E. Boutroux, Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy, "Conclusion." Harvard Theological Review, vol. 7, p. 1. New World, vol. 9, p. 285. Biblical World, vol. 43, p. 178.

CHAPTER XVII

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE

THE Christian Bible consists of the sacred books of the Jews, together with certain narratives and letters and a fragment of apocalyptic literature dating from the early Christian era. All these documents were slowly sifted out of a much larger mass of similar literature, the collection reaching that definite limit which it has since maintained in the fifth century A.D. A heterogeneous corpus as it is of divers sorts of writings, by men of many different beliefs and convictions, accumulated during ten centuries of marked religious transition,1 an unbiased mind would certainly never suspect it of being a book of supernatural origin or authority. It is true that the Hebrew prophets, like the prophets of other religions, believed themselves inspired of God in their utterances, and used, fearlessly and freely, the formula, "Thus saith Jehovah," when they expressed their burning convictions of right and wrong. But even those of their contemporaries who believed them to be inspired of God were free to criticize their specific pronouncements. The Old Testament historians, in compiling their chronicles, referred now and then to earlier and well-known books as authority for their statements,2 as they would hardly have done if they had expected their accounts to be taken on Divine authority. The author of Luke, in prefacing his work, claims attention only as a painstaking historian, not 1 The J document of the Hexateuch was written about 850 B.C., and the latest books of the New Testament about 130 a.d.

2 See, e.g., Joshua 10: 12 ff; Num. 21: 14. Sixteen books, now lost, are thus alluded to in the Old Testament.