"Who raised our great institutions of learning? Infidels never a stone of them!"
Stephen Girard founded the best institution of learning, the best charity, the noblest ever founded in this or any other land; and under the roof built by his wisdom and his wealth many thousands of orphans have been reared, clothed, fed and educated, not only in books, but in avocations, and become happy and useful citizens. Under his will there has been distributed to the poor, fuel to the value of more than $500,000; and this distribution goes on year after year.
One of the best observatories in the world was built by the generosity of James Lick, an infidel. I call attention to these two cases simply to show that the gentleman is mistaken, and that he was somewhat carried away by his zeal.
So, too, Mr. Peters takes the ground that "we are indebted to Christianity for our chronology."
According to Christianity this world has been peopled about six thousand years. Christian chronology gives the age of the first man, and then gives the line from father to son down to the flood, and from the flood down to the coming of Christ, showing that men have been upon the earth only about six thousand years. This chronology is infinitely absurd, and I do not believe that there is an intelligent, well-educated Christian in the world, having examined the subject, who will say that the Christian chronology is correct.
Neither can it, I think, truthfully be said that "we are indebted to Christianity for the continuation of history." The best modern historians of whom I have any knowledge are Voltaire, Hume, Gibbon, Buckle and Draper.
Neither can I admit that "we are indebted to Christianity for natural philosophy."
I do not deny that some natural philosophers have also been Christians, or, rather, that some Christians have been natural philosophers to the extent that their Christianity permitted. But Lamarck and Humboldt and Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel and Huxley and Tyndall have done far more for natural philosophy than they have for orthodox religion.
Whoever believes in the miraculous must be the enemy of natural philosophy. To him there is something above nature, liable to interfere with nature. Such a man has two classes of ideas in his mind, each inconsistent with the other. To the extent that he believes in the supernatural he is incapacitated for dealing with the natural, and to that extent fails to be a philosopher. Philosophy does not include the caprice of the Infinite. It is founded on the absolute integrity and invariability of nature.
Neither do I agree with the reverend gentleman when he says that "we are indebted to Christianity for our knowledge of philology."