Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/516

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If the origin of species by derivation is established, it goes a great deal further and gives us the origin of many more things. It must be taken as an indication of the plan of Nature, of which man is a part, so that the career of humanity is at once brought under the law of development. If there be truth in evolution, we are bound to go by it; and if man's religious nature has had an unfolding, like the other elements of his being, that fact must certainly be of the greatest moment in determining the relations of religion and science. As to harmony or conflict, the question at once arises at what stage it is taken, and what are the traits of that change in which man's religious progress consists. Dr. Winchell, as we have said, affirms the universality of the religious element in man, and deduces its validity from its universality, but he ought to have eliminated from it the transitory, or what can be outgrown, and told us what there is about it that is essential and permanent, and to be finally harmonized with science. He enumerates the following as the grand facts common to the religious faiths of the world: 1. A Supreme Being, the author of all things in existence; 2. A revelation of the Supreme Being either in sensible things or in the intelligence of inspired men; 3. A system of worship—which is either instinctive and aimless, or intended to propitiate the Deity and win happiness for the worshiper; 4. Prayer, the universal cry of humanity in distress; 5. Future existence; 6. Moral responsibility; 7. A system of future rewards and punishments; 8. A priesthood charged with the direction of religious ceremonies, and clothed with a special investiture of divine authority and power. He says: "These facts I find to be the constants in the varying faiths of mankind. I will add that two other facts reveal themselves in most of the religious systems of the world—both the greater and the less. These are: 1. A belief in the efficacy of vicarious expiation; 2. An expectation of a Redeemer."

These are, no doubt very widely-spread beliefs, but they have had very different meanings among different races, and at different times. In this field, preëminently, we are familiar with the decay of the vital core of beliefs, and the conversation of their formulas, but what we want most to know is, the laws of change, transformation, and expansion of religious ideas, in relation to man's intellectual development—what falls away and what survives. Dr. Winchell recognizes the progress, and gives us the final result, in a form so generalized, that we can only find the constants just named by some stretch of implication. He says: "The next psychic cycle, it seems to me, will witness a synthesis of thought and faith—a recognition of the fact that it is impossible for reason to find solid ground that is not consecrated ground; that all philosophy and all science belong to religion; that all truth is a revelation of God; that the truths of written revelation, if not intelligible to reason, are nevertheless consonant with reason; and that divine agency, instead of standing removed from man by infinite intervals of time and space, is, indeed, the true name of those energies which work their myriad phenomena in the natural world around us. This consummation—at once the inspiration of a fervent religion and the prophecy of the loftiest science—is to be the noontide reign of wedded intellect and faith, whose morning rays already stream far above our horizon."

Turkey. By James Baker, M. A. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 495. Price, $4.

The problem of the Turkish Empire, the great anomaly in European civilization, has long occupied the attention of those interested in international politics—an interest greatly heightened, of late, by the Russian invasion of Turkey, and the threatened complication of other states in the struggle. To those whose solicitude about the Oriental question leads them to inquire into the condition of the people most deeply concerned the present volume will be eminently welcome. We lately called attention to Mr. Wallace's admirable book on "Russia." Colonel Baker's volume gives us a corresponding picture of Turkish life and character, the political institutions, religious peculiarities, and material resources of the empire. The book is full of very interesting information upon this class of subjects, much of which is fresh, and calculated to