The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

EXPERIENCE FROM PAST CONFLICTS. 79ence. These conflicts were in the strictestsense inevitable, simply because thought anddiscovery have been progressive; and it is impossiblefor those not personally engaged inresearch to accept without reluctance new representationsof familiar facts. If men longcontinued unwilling to admit that the earthmoves round the sun, and that the rising andsetting of the luminary are delusions, whilethe succession of light and darkness is real, wecan not wonder at this slowness of assent, orcharge it to the power of religious thought.The conflict was not between religion and science,but between popular notions and scientificobservations. Often in the earlier periodsof awakened thought, following the slumberof the middle ages, the contest accidentallywore a religious aspect, but it was so onlybecause the higher intelligence and the generalwork of instruction belonged to the religiousorders.If, however, we give due weight to historicalfacts, it will appear that the rectificationof common thought as to the form of theearth, and its place in relation to the heavenlybodies, was achieved through the conflict ofa later science with an earlier. Science has