Thus runs the speech that is ever recurring in the literature of the day, in newspapers and magazines no less than in books. And this speech makes an impression on its hearers. Indeed, why should it not? After describing how these heroes of science in recent times marched on triumphantly from victory to victory, how they renewed the face of the earth, and became the pioneers of human progress, how can they fail to make a deep impression if in the same breath they state that these discoverers of truth have, almost to a man, broken with the ancient teachings of the Christian religion?
Without doubt the suggestive effect of such speculation must be very considerable with those who lack sufficient historical knowledge. The case is different with those better acquainted with the history of the natural sciences. They know that it is not true to state that the leading natural scientists, for the most part, or even unanimously, have rejected and denied Christian religion, that it is a lie and a falsification of history.
Let us illustrate it briefly. We do not, of course, mean to say, that if it were true that all the leading naturalists were infidels, the inference would necessarily follow that Christianity is untenable, and incompatible with science. Not at all. First of all, natural scientists who oppose Christianity could hardly ever come forward in the capacity of experts in this matter. For by venturing the assertion that world-matter and world-force are eternal and uncreated, that they develop by force of natural causality, by unending evolution, and not by the power and direction of an intelligent cause, they leave their own province and trespass on the domain of philosophy. These and similar questions are not solved by natural science research, by experiment, observation, or calculation, but are the subjects of philosophical speculation. Atheism, materialism, the denial of the soul's immortality or of eternal destination, all these are philosophical matters, and a natural science theory of the world is a misconception about as absurd as a Swiss England or a Bavarian Spain.
As it is impossible to review here all scientists of the past centuries, to probe their bent of mind, we shall restrict ourselves in the following to scientists of the first rank, for to [pg 200] them the assertion above mentioned must chiefly refer. First of all, they were possessed of that spirit of scientific research claimed to be incompatible with the faith; and they, more than others, should have been conscious of this contradiction. It is plain that if they did not know anything of the claimed antagonism between the theories of evolution and of creation, between physical facts and spirituality of soul, between natural law and miracles; if it be shown that many of them were actually orthodox Christians, believing in the supernatural and yet enthusiastic friends of science, fathoming the laws of nature and yet unshaken in their faith, then the fact that inferior minds talk of a contradiction unknown to these great ones can no longer make much of an impression.
Therefore let us look over the long list of great scholars of the last centuries, those great men to whom we owe knowledge and discoveries that are our joy to this very day. Among them we shall find many who, in their life and thought, have plainly confessed themselves faithful Christians; we shall find that others were at least the opponents of atheism and materialism, that they clung to the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, and that is a matter of moment when the antagonism between natural science and faith is under discussion.
We shall not go back to the ancient representatives of natural science, men like Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, and others of past ages, partly because there is no doubt about the religious views of those men, partly because research at their time was imperfect. We begin at the rise of modern natural science.
The Old Masters.
At the threshold of modern natural science there stands the man who solved the riddle that had puzzled centuries before him, the father of modern astronomy, Nikolaus Copernicus. He had studied at the universities of Cracow, Bologna, Ferrara, and Padua, and while he was one of the foremost historians of his time, it was astronomy that had engaged his enthusiastic devotion from his youth. He was a Catholic priest, a Canon [pg 201] of Frauenberg. “If recent representatives of the Roman Church,” so writes the Protestant theologian, O. Zoeckler, “praise this Frauenberg Canon as a faithful son of their Church, this fact must be granted by Protestants, despite the frankness with which he opposed the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories taught by the scholastics, and despite his friendship with the Protestant Rheticus” (Gottes Zeugen im Reiche der Natur, 1906, p. 82). George Joachim, a native of Feldkirch, surnamed Rheticus, and a Protestant professor at Wittenberg, came to Copernicus at Frauenberg, and was cordially received. His praise for “his teacher” is unreserved. He speaks in the same admiring terms of Tiedemann Giese, in those days Bishop of Kulm.
For nearly forty years Copernicus sat in the modest observatory which he had erected at Frauenberg, studying and collecting the material for his book. Even after all this time this deliberate scholar, despite the urging of his friends, especially Bishop Tiedemann Giese and Cardinal Schoenberg, Archbishop of Capua, hesitated for ten years longer before publishing his discoveries. The work was entitled De revolutionibus orbium caelestium, libri VI, and was dedicated to Pope Paul III. The author himself could enjoy his achievement but very little. The first copy sent by the printer reached Copernicus on his deathbed, and a few hours later he breathed his last, on May 24, 1543.
In the introduction to his work this devout Christian scientist wrote: “Who would not be urged by the intimate intercourse with the work of His hands to the contemplation of the Most High, and to the admiration for the Omnipotent Architect of the universe, in whom is the highest happiness, and in whom is the perfection of all that is good?”