The Relations Between Religion and Science / Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884

by Frederick Temple

And in the second place, while the creation, the more closely it is examined the more distinctly shows the marks of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, so the history of the world exhibits in the Revelation made to man clear proofs of that heavenly love which corresponds to the character of Him who has put love at the head of all the requirements of His law. The Revelation given to us has undeniably made a real mark on the world. It has upheld millions of men in a holiness of life corresponding in a very real degree to the holiness required by the law of duty. It has perpetually more and more cleared up the true teaching of that law. It is still continuing the same process, and generation after generation is better able to understand that teaching. Its fruits have been a harvest of saints and martyrs, some known and reverenced, some quite unnoticed. It has leavened all literature and all legislation. It has changed the customs of mankind and is still changing them. And if it be replied that all this is nothing but one form of the development of humanity and shows no proof of a Divine Ruler, we have a right to ask what then could be the source of such a development, and how is it that so great a power should always have worked in the name of God and should have always referred everything to His command? That fanaticism should plead God's authority without any right to do so is intelligible. But is it intelligible that all this truth and justice and purity and self-sacrificing love, all this obedience to the Supreme Law, should be the fruit of believing a lie? If there be a God, it is to be expected that He would communicate with His creatures if those creatures were capable of receiving the communication; and if He did communicate with His creatures it is to be expected that His communication would be such as we find in the Bible. The purpose of the Bible, the form of it, the gradual formation of it, the steadily-growing Revelation contained in it, these harmonise with the moral law revealed originally in the conscience. And the effect which the Revelation has produced on human history is real and great. The power which God's Revelation has exerted on the world is an undeniable fact among phenomena. It is not a demonstration of His existence; but it is a full answer to those who say, 'If God made and rules the world why do we find no signs of His hand in its course?'

And thirdly, this Revelation has not merely taken the form of a message or a series of messages, but has culminated in the appearance of a person who has always satisfied and still satisfies the conception formed by our spiritual faculty of a human representation of the divine law. Our Lord's life is that law translated into human action, and all the more because human faculties had not first framed the conception which He then came to fulfil, but He exhibited the ideal, and our conception rose as it were to correspond to it. And, as He includes in Himself all the teaching, so does He give from Himself all the power of the Revelation which He came to crown. And every true disciple of Christ can bear witness to the reality of that power in sustaining the soul.

Thus has the God, whom our spiritual faculty commands us to worship and to reverence, shown Himself in the world of phenomena. And He has given proofs of His existence and His character precisely corresponding to the conception which He has enabled, and indeed commanded, us to form of Him. And it is because the proofs that He has given are of this nature that we are tempted to ask for more proofs of a different kind.

For it is undeniable that believers and unbelievers alike are perpetually asking for proofs that shall have more of the scientific and less of the religious character, proofs that shall more distinctly appeal to the senses. Believers in all ages have longed for external support to their faith; unbelievers have refused to believe unless supplied with more physical evidence. Believers shrink from being thrown inwards on themselves; they fear the wavering of their own faith; they are alarmed at the prospect of the buttresses of their belief being taken from them. They find it easier to believe the spiritual evidence, if they can first find much physical evidence. They wish (to use the Apostle's words) to walk by sight and not by faith. And unbelievers want a tangible proof that shall compel their understanding before it awakes their conscience. They demand a Revelation, not only confirmed by miracles at the time, but confirmed again and again by repeated miracles to every succeeding generation. They want miracles in every age adapted to the science of the age, miracles which no hardness of heart would be able to deny, which would convince the scientific man through his Science independently of his having any will to make holiness his aim when he had been convinced. This kind of evidence it has not pleased God to give. It is not the scientific man that God seeks as such, any more than it is the ignorant man that He seeks as such. And the proofs that He gives are plainly in all cases conditioned by the rule that the spiritually minded shall most easily and most keenly perceive their force.

And, as far as unbelievers are concerned, I do not see that more need be said except to tell them that this rule is inflexible, and that it is by another way that they must look to find God, and not by the way that they insist on choosing. But believers who are in the same case need to be warned of some very real dangers that always attend a faith which makes too much of things not spiritual.

For, first, there is a real and great danger that the spiritual may be altogether obscured by the literal and the physical. We look back with astonishment on the Rabbinical interpretations of the Old Testament, and all the more because of the really great and true thoughts that are sometimes to be found in the midst of their fanciful conceits. We can trace the mischief they did to true Religion by the perverted reverence with which they regarded the words and even the letters, and the very shapes of the letters, in which their sacred books were written. Their perversions of the law of God, their subtle refinements of interpretation, their trivial conceits, their false and misleading comments and inferences, all certainly tended to encourage the hypocrisy which our Lord rebuked, and against which St. Paul contended. But we still see something of the same spirit in the attempt to maintain a verbal and even literal inspiration of the whole Bible, filling it not with the breath of a Divine Spirit, but with minute details of doctrine and precept often questionable, and, whenever separated from the principles of the eternal law, valueless or even mischievous. God's Word, instead of leading us to Him, is made to stand between and hide His face.

But, secondly, there is a serious risk that if the mind be fastened on things external in some way connected with, but yet distinct from the substance of Revelation, it may turn out that these external things cannot hold the ground on which they have been placed. They have to be given up by force at last, when they ought to have been given up long before. And when given up they too often tear away with them part of the strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only the buttress outside but a part of the living framework. It is distinctly the fault of religious, not of scientific men, that there was once a great contest between the Bible and Astronomy, that there has since been a great contest between the Bible and Geology, that there is still a great contest between the Bible and Evolution. In no one of these cases was the Revelation contained in the Bible in danger, but only the interpretation commonly put on the Bible. It is easy long afterwards to condemn the opponents of Galileo and speak of their treatment of him and his teaching as fanaticism and bigotry; and such condemnation has not unfrequently been heard from the very lips that nevertheless denounced the teaching of the geologists. But in all these cases the principle has been the same, and believers have insisted that the Bible itself was gone unless their interpretation of it was upheld. And the mischief is double. For many believers, and more especially unlearned believers, instead of gently helping one another to form the necessary modification of their view of the Bible teaching, instead of endeavouring to find the way out of the perplexity and to disentangle the true spiritual lesson from the accessories which are no part of itself, insisted that it must be all or nothing, and prepared for themselves a very severe trial. There was no doctrine involved whatever; there was nothing at stake on which the spiritual life depended. The duty to be patient, to enquire carefully, to study the other side, to wait for light, was as plain as any duty could be. But all this was forgotten in a somewhat unreasoning impulse to resist an assault on the faith. And there cannot be a doubt that on all these occasions many believers have been seriously shaken by slowly finding out that the position they have taken is untenable. When men have to give up in such circumstances they generally give up far more than they need, and in some cases an unreasonable resistance has been followed by an equally unreasonable surrender. And while believers have thus prepared a stumblingblock for themselves they have put quite as great a stumblingblock before others. For students of Science, informed by instant voices all around that they must choose between their Science and the Bible, knowing as they did that their Science was true, and supposing that the lovers and defenders of the Bible best knew what its teaching was, had no choice as honest men but to hold the truth as far as they possessed it and to give up the Bible in order to maintain their Science. It was a grievous injury inflicted on them; and though some among them might deserve no sympathy, there were some whom it was a great loss to lose.

But in the third place, the result of this clinging to externals is to shut out Science and all its correlative branches of knowledge from their proper office of making perpetually clearer the true and full meaning of the Revelation itself. It is intended that Religion should use the aid of Science in clearing her own conceptions. It is intended that as men advance in knowledge of God's works and in power of handling that knowledge, they should find themselves better able to interpret the message which they have received from their Father in Heaven. Our knowledge of the true meaning of the Bible has gained, and it was intended that it should gain, by the increase of other knowledge. Science makes clearer than anything else could have made it the higher level on which the Bible puts what is spiritual over what is material. I do not hesitate to ascribe to Science a clearer knowledge of the true interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, and to scientific history a truer knowledge of the great historical prophets. The advance of secular studies, as they are called, clears up much in the Psalms, and much in the other poetical Books of Scripture. I cannot doubt that this was intended from the beginning, and that as Science has already done genuine service to Religion in this way, so will it do still better service with process of time.

On this side also, as on the scientific side, the teaching of the spiritual faculty and the teaching of Revelation indicate that the physical and the spiritual worlds are one whole, and that neither is complete without the other. Science enters into Religion, and is its counterpart, and has its share to take in the conduct of life and in the formation of opinion. And the believer is bound to recognise its value and make use of its services.

In conclusion, it is plain that the antagonism between Science and Religion arises much more from a difference of spirit and temper in the students of each than from any inherent opposition between the two. The man of Science is inclined to shut out from consideration a whole body of evidence, the moral and spiritual; the believer is inclined to shut out the physical. And each, from long looking at that evidence alone which properly belongs to his own subject, is inclined to hold the other cheap, and to charge on those who adduce it either blindness of understanding or wilful refusal to accept the truth. And when such a conflict arises it is the higher and not the lower, it is Faith and not Science that is likely to suffer. For the physical evidence is tangible, and the perception of it not much affected by the character of the man who studies it; the spiritual evidence stands unshaken in itself, but it is hid from eyes that have no spiritual perception, and that perception necessarily varies with the man.