Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge

In an Address which the editor of this Magazine delivered, in 1875, at the opening of Vanderbilt University, he maintained, and endeavored in outline to show, that there is no conflict between true science and true religion, and that both hold the same basis. If he had the talent of Mr. John Thompson Bixby, and had expanded his Address into a volume, he would have produced very much such a work as Mr. Bixby has published under the title of "Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge." Indeed, some of the expressions in both works, and several of the lines of thought, are so alike that whoever reads them will probably feel that the writer of the second must have read some portion of the first. But this is not so, as Mr. Bixby, whose book was not published until the year after the delivery of our Address, could scarcely have seen it. We commend this volume most heartily. One great defect of the day is partial reading. Men read on one side. A man takes a Democratic or a Republican newspaper, and reads no other. Men interested in science read such works as Spencer's, Draper's, the "Popular Science Monthly," and publications of that class, written in the interests of the opponents of Christianity, and they do not read such works as Dr. Fraser's, Professor Welch's, and Mr. Bixby's.

Another class read all on this side, and never examine the writings of Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, and men of that class. Both sides must be read for fair intellectual culture, and for an intelligent understanding of either. Mr. Bixby shows that Science and Religion are so similar in their methods, their objects, and their degrees of certainty, that neither can claim superiority over the other. Science is as much sustained by intuitions, authorities, and analogies, as Religion is. As to the objects, Science has quite as much to do with invisibilities' and infinities as Religion has. As to certainty and exactitude, Science can make but an approximation. There does not exist, and there cannot be considered a geometrical figure which satisfies the definition and represents the name given to it by Science. Even the laws of Kepler are not most exactly true. The uniformity of nature is a. myth. There is no way of proving scientifically that the laws which operate now will operate the next moment. One system of Science has kicked another system of Science out of the world, quite as rapidly and quite as frequently as one system of Theology has destroyed another system of Theology. All these things and more Mr. Bixby maintains with great largeness of illustration, and great courtesy toward those on the opposite side. His style is very beautiful. We earnestly commend this book to our readers. They cannot read it without great pleasure or great profit. It is also so suggestive as to lend to the prosecution of further studies in this line.

—Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, Volume 1 [1877]

Similarities of Physical and Religious Knowledge

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