Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.
cent Briemie in the eighteenth century found the monument
that about the middle of the nineteenth cen-
renewing itself ;
tury Lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty
feet ; high that within two years afterward De Saulcy found
it washed into the form of a ; spire that a year later Van de
Velde found it utterly washed ; away and
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that a few years
later Palmer found it " a statue bearing a striking resemblance
to an Arab woman with a child in her arms." So ended the
last great demonstration, thus far, on the side of sacred sci-
ence the last retreating shot from the theological rearguard.
It is but just to say that a very great share in the honour
of the victory of science in this field is due to men trained
as theologians. It would naturally be so, since few others
have devoted themselves to direct labour in it ; yet great
honour is none the less due to such men as Reland, Mariti,
Smith, Robinson, Stanley, Tristram, and SchafT.
They have rendered even a greater service to religion
than to science, for they have made a beginning, at least, of
doing away with that enforced belief in myths as history
which has become a most serious danger to Christianity.
For the worst enemy of Christianity could wish nothing
more than that its main leaders should prove that it can not
be adopted save by those who accept, as historical, statements
which unbiased men throughout the world know to
be mythical. The result of such a demonstration would
only be more and more to make thinking people inside the
Church dissemblers, and thinking people outside, scoffers.
Far better is it to welcome the aid of science, in the con-
viction that all truth is one, and, in the light of this truth, to
allow theology and science to work together in the steady
evolution of religion and morality.
^^ The revelations made by the sciences which most di-
rectly deal with the history of man all converge in the truth
that during the earlier stages of this evolution moral and
spiritual teachings must be inclosed in myth, legend, and
" "
parable. The Master felt this when he gave to the poor
peasants about him, and so to the world, his simple and
beautiful illustrations. In making this truth clear, science
will give to religion far more than it will take away, for it
will throw new life and light into all sacred literature.