Science and Sentiment Author:Noah Porter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in. WHAT WE MEAN BY CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY I AM aware, as many of you must be, that the phrase Christian Philosophy is' rejected by many well-meaning and tr... more »uth-loving men as unmeaning and unscientific. They would urge in objection, that a philosophy committed beforehand to the support of Christianity must thereby abandon its scientific independence. Moreover, Christianity in form is a historic narrative, — a simple record of facts, a story of events, a portraiture of persons : what can it possibly have to do with philosophy, which concerns itself only with forces and laws and principles? Then, again, the events and personages which Christianity records are supernatural; whereas science and philosophy know nothing of the supernatural, but are limited altogether to those forces which are natural, and those laws which are constant and fixed. Philosophy also addresses itself to the Reason, whose principles of evidence are clear and unchangeable, and whose methods of inquiry are definite and uncompromising. Christianity also appeals to Faith, which, whatever it may be as a process of belief or conviction, is neither compelled by demonstration nor silenced by experiment. The spirit of Science is aggressive and self-relying. The spirit of Christianity is self-distrustful and confiding. Christian knowledge, moreover, thrives in the sphere of emotion and aspira 1 Delivered as a lecture originally at Cincinnati, March 31,1877. tion. It requires and rejoices in the genial warmth of the affections and the hopes. But science admits no other light than the cool and dry light of reason: it shrinks from every influence which does not either justify or compel conviction. To finish the argument, Christianity has jealously withstood every advance of science which has questioned its dogmas, a...« less