Physical and Religious Knowledge. By James Bixby. (Appleton and Co.,
New York.)—The object of this book is to reconcile science and religion, by showing that they both really rest on a common ground, and have to appeal to the same mental principles. The subject, the author says, " may ho worn threadbare, but it cannot be shoved out of sight." Science, he thinks, holds in its band the belief of the next century; the facts which men of science establish to-day "will, in six months' time, be read in every newspaper and magazine in the civilised world, in ten years will be incorporated in our school-books, and in thirty years will be the creed of every educated man." With the general purpose of his book we are in thorough sympathy, but we question whether ho has brought anything which can bo called a distinctly new contribution to this well-worn subject. By theology or religion, he simply understands, it would seem, the elementary truths of theism ; and these, he seeks to show, rest as much on a basis of real experience as physical science itself does. The only difference between science and religion is that they deal respectively with a different class of facts,—thought, self- directing will, the sense of right and wrong, the consciousness of moral responsibility being as much facts as the attraction of the magnet or the undulation of the sound-wave. Protoplasm and evolu- tion cannot, in the author's opinion, account for sublime aspirations and immortal longings, though we suppose a disciple of Mr. Darwin would. demur to this, and would regard these phenomena as developments to- be classed in the same category as the instincts of animals. The author feels very strongly that religion has much to learn from science, and ought to lose no opportunity of cultivating fr iendly relations with it. Most of us will at least agree with the saying quoted of an American preacher, who told some medical students whom he was addressing "that if the clergy could ramble with Mr. Huxley over the glaciers, and Mr. Huxley would take an excursion into the fields of Christian history, we should have better clerical sermons and better lay sermons."
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