Article April 14, 1906 Issue

Scholarship has at last entered on its serious mission of...

John Merle Coulter

University of Chicago

Scholarship has at last entered on its serious mission of curbing the irrelevant emotions of mankind, and of introducing that intellectual domination which must analyze the problems of religion to their ultimate facts and construct general systems of belief which are rational and effective. What people for centuries have taken for granted and belived in as facts are not so because they have been believed, they can be recognized as facts only when investigation proves them to be true. Science has a spirit of inquiry. In our experience we encounter a vast body of established belief in reference to all important subjects. This belongs to two categories: the priceless results of generations of experience, and heirloom rubbish.

The basic moral laws contained in the Ten Commandments or in the Sermon on the Mount are not authoritative because they are commanded; they are authoritative because they are true. Science never would raise the question whether they are binding upon this nation or that, or upon this generation or some other, but simply whether they express truths essential to a well-ordered individual or society. If so, they will ever be true, and will apply everywhere, just as does the law of gravitation. Science is little interested in dogmatic theology, for its data, methods, and conclusions are to it like a foreign tongue, but it is immensely interested in morality and religion, and none appeals to it so strongly as the morality and religion of Christ.

Prof. John Merle Coulter.
University of Chicago.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Scholarship has at last entered on its serious mission of...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access