This manner of arguing is hardly creditable to a professor of science; for, even admitting for the sake of argument that the knowledge of the universe is comparatively “a recent thing,” it would not follow that such a knowledge must alter the Christian conception of the divine nature. Let the professor make the universe as great, as boundless, and as harmonious as possible; what then? Will such a universe proclaim a new God? By no means. It will still proclaim the same God, though in a louder voice. For the harmony, beauty, and grandeur of the universe reveal to us the infinite greatness, beauty, and wisdom of its Creator; and the greater our knowledge of such a universe, the more forcible the demonstration of the infinite perfection of its Creator. Now, this Creator is our old God, the God of the Bible, the God to whom Mr. Youmans owes his existence, and to whom he must one day give an account of how he used or abused his intellectual powers. This is, however, the God whom the professor would fain banish from the universe. Is there anything more unphilosophic or more unscientific?
But the knowledge of the universe, from which we rise to the conception of God, is not “a recent thing.” Infidels are apt to imagine that the world owes to them the knowledge of natural science. We must remind them that science has been built up by men who believed in God. “Advanced” science is of course “a recent thing,” but it does not “constitute an important stage” in the line of real progress; for it consists of nothing but reckless assumptions, deceitful phraseology, and illogical conclusions. Three thousand years ago King David averred that “the heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands.” Has advanced science made any recent discovery in the heavens or on earth which gives the lie to this highly philosophical statement? Quite the contrary. It is, therefore, supremely ridiculous to talk of a “vast revolution” whose effect must be “to purify the ideal of Divinity.” This vast revolution is a dream of the professor.
But he says:
“Is it rational to expect that the man of developed intellect whose life is spent in the all-absorbing study of that mighty and ever-expanding system of truth that is embodied in the method of Nature will form the same idea of God as the ignorant blockhead who knows and cares nothing for these things, who is incapable of reflection or insight, and who passively accepts the narrow notions upon this subject that other people put into his head? As regards the divine government of the world, two such contrasted minds can hardly have anything in common.”
This is a fair sample of the logical processes of certain thinkers “of developed intellect.” Our professor assumes, first, that Catholic theologians are “ignorant blockheads,” that they “know and care nothing” for natural truths, that they are “incapable of reflection or insight,” and that they “passively accept” what others may put into their heads. Would it not be more reasonable to assume that a “blockhead” is a man who asserts what cannot be proved, as a certain professor is wont to do? And would it be unfair to assume that the man who “knows and cares nothing” for truth is one who beguiles his readers into error, and, when convicted, makes no amends? We would not say that the professor is “incapable of reflection or insight,” for we think that no human being can be so degraded as to deserve this stigma; but we cannot help thinking that Mr. Youmans “passively accepts” many absurd notions, for which he cannot account, except by saying that they “have been put into his head” by such “developed intellects” as Huxley’s, Darwin’s, Spencer’s, and other notorious falsifiers of truth.
Professor Youmans assumes also that our intellects cannot be “developed” enough to form a true conception of God, unless we apply to “the all-absorbing study of the method of Nature,” by which he means the conservation of energy, the indestructibility of matter, the evolution of species, and other cognate theories. This assumption has no foundation. To form a true conception of God it suffices to know that the universe is subject to continual changes, and therefore contingent, and consequently created. This leads us directly to the conception of a Creator, or of a First Cause which is self-existent, independent, and eternal. Modern science and “developed intellects” have nothing to say against this. It is therefore a gross absurdity to assume that the study of the method of nature interferes with the old conception of God.
A third assumption of the professor is that our notion of divine nature is “narrow.” It is astonishing that Mr. Youmans could have allowed himself to make so manifestly foolish a statement. Is there anything “narrow” in immensity? in omnipotence? in eternity? in infinite wisdom? or in any other attribute of the true God? And if our notion of God, which involves all such attributes, is still “narrow,” what shall we say of the professor’s notion which involves nothing but the “unthinkable”—that is, nothing at all?
The professor proceeds to say that if a man is ignorant and stupid his contemplation of divine things will reflect his own limitation. This is a great truth; but he should have been loath to proclaim it in a place where we find so many proofs of his own “limitation.” On the other hand, it is not from the ignorant and the stupid that our philosophers and theologians have derived their notion of God; and to confound the latter with the former is, on the part of a “developed intellect,” a miserable show of logic. The ignorant and the stupid, continues Mr. Youmans, “will cling to a grovelling anthropomorphism,” and conceive of the Deity “as a man like himself, only greater and more powerful, and as chiefly interested in the things that he is interested in.” To which we answer that the stupid and the ignorant of divine things are those who do not know God, and who maintain against the universal verdict of reason that God is “unknowable.” We defy Mr. Youmans to point out a stupidity and an ignorance of divine things which equals that of him who pretends to think of the “unthinkable.” This is even worse than “to cling to a grovelling anthropomorphism.” Of course our anthropomorphism is a poetic invention of the “developed intellect,” and therefore we may dismiss it without further comment.
“The profound student of science,” he adds, “will rise to a more spiritualized and abstract ideal of the divine nature, or will be so oppressed with a consciousness of the Infinity as to reverently refrain from all attempts to grasp, and formulate, and limit the nature of that which is past finding out, which is unspeakable and unthinkable.”
To understand the real meaning of this sentence we must remember that he who wrote it does not accept the God of theologians. Scientific men, as he has told us, claim that their studies lead them “to higher and more worthy conceptions” of the divine power than the conceptions offered by theology. It is obvious, therefore, that the “spiritualized and abstract ideal of the divine nature” to which the profound student of science is expected to rise is not the ideal recognized by theology. This is very strange; for if theology does not furnish the true ideal of divine nature, much less can such an ideal be furnished by the science of matter. Every science is best acquainted with its own specific object; and since God is the object of theology, the ideal of the divine nature is to be found in theology, not in natural science. Hence “the profound student of science” may indeed determine the laws of physical and chemical phenomena, speak of masses and densities, of solids and fluids, and of other experimental subjects without much danger of error, but he has no qualification for inventing a new ideal of divine nature. The ideal of a thing exhibits the essence of the thing; and the study of essences does not belong to the scientist, whose field is confined within the phenomena and their laws. The best scientists confess that they do not even know the essence of matter, though matter is the proper and most familiar object of their study. Yet these are the men who, according to Mr. Youmans, should know best the essence of God.