Religion And Health

enced his attitude of mind toward his body and its processes as to affect them deeply. The medicine man with his appeal to the religious as well as the supersti

clipse of the religious instinct is at the basis of the increase in suicide and also undoubtedly of insanity in our day. The lack of an abiding faith in Providence is the source of many dreads and worries that affect h

stors so deeply? While we may realize all the depth of the mystery in the midst of which we are, can we, with our little minds, hope to fathom any of it? This is the questioning feeling that will not down for a certain number of those who have had educational advantages. Must we not just confes

ude at least the educated intelligent people of our generation from having their health affected in any way by their religion? Above all, if religion is to influence health, must there not be some regular practice of it, and have not the scientists of t

folk were more easily satisfied with regard to such things than we are in our enlightened scientific era. Religion is surely not something that our contemporaries, with their broader {10} outlook on the

as would demand in our already overstrenuous daily life with its many duties the devotion of time to religious exercises. We surely

health. Men may be incurably religious in the mass, as yet, but this instinct is manifestly passing, for the educated at least, and f

Most of the men who have done the great work of modern science have been deeply religious, and a great many of them have practiced their {11} religion very faithfully. It is true that not a few of the lesser lights in science have been carried away by the impression that science was just about to explain everything, and there was no longer any need of a creator or creation or of Providence, but that is only because of their own limitations. Francis Bacon, himself a distinguished thinker in science, declared some three hundred years ago that his own feeling was that a little

gion. Lord Kelvin, at the beginning of the twentieth century, at the moment when he was looked up to by all the world as the greatest of living physical scientists, did not hesitate to say that "science demonstrates the existence of a Creator." As president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science he declared: "But stro

te, to the potency of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, Lord Kelvin wrote to Liebig, the great chemist, asking him if a leaf or a flower could be formed or even made to grow

"The true chemist sees God in all the manifold forms of the external world." Linnaeus, to whom the modern world confesses th

d in all of them, even in the least, and in those that border on

ems, and I have seen that none will work without a God." Pasteur declared in his address before the French Academy, when {13} admitted as a member, "Blessed is the man who has an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel and obeys it." He had once said, impatient at the

whom we owe so many significan

in the book of nature as in the Holy Scriptures, and wh

the wonderful works of God that he declared, a short time before his death, "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverti

ker in science and those who know their science only at second-hand. Those who have acquired their knowledge of science easily have no idea of the difficulties which the original investigator had to e

ants. Hence their irreligion and their infatuation. It is quite different with people who have made discoveries themselves. They know by experience how limited their field is, and they find themselves at every st

was the co-author with Lord Kelvin of Thomson's and Tait's "Natural Philosophy" (the well-known T+T) summed up the question of the suppose

n recent times that it has come to be taken for granted by writers of leading articles, etc.,

an (unless indeed he be literally a specialist-such as a pure mathematician, or a m

tain), we cannot but receive for answer such names as Brewster, Faraday, Forbes, Graham, Rowan Hamilton, Herschel, and Talbot. This must be the

, after having been secretary of the Royal Society for some ten years, was elected to what has been called the highest official position in the scientific world-the presidency of the Royal

us or anti-Christian. Witness: Faraday, Maxwell, Stokes,

r quotations in this chapter to Tabrum "Reli

Oersted, Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy, and many others are among the believers. Faraday once declared when the dark shadow of death was creeping over him, "I bow before Him who is the Lord of all, and ho

sociate forces which are diffused through nature; when I think of that calm and tranquil balancing of their energies which enables elements, most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell

he demonstration of the intimate relationship between magnetism and electricity, whose name all Europe rang with in the early part of the nineteenth century, was a man of really great genius and scientific penetration and yet of deeply fervent piety. He

ture. It is obvious, therefore, that the searching eye of man, whether he regards his own inward being or the creation surrounding him, is always led to the eternal source of all things. In all inquiry, the ultimate aim is to discover that which really exists and to contemplate it in its pure light apart from all that deceives the careless observer by only a seeming existence. The philosopher will then comprehend what, amidst ceaseless change, is the Constant and Uncreated, w

comprehends the whole array of nature, he perceives that it is not merely an idea of an abstract notion, as it is called; but that reason and the power to which everything is indebted for its essential nature are only the revelation of a self-sustained Being. How can {18} he, when he sees this, be o

ty while he was professor of foreign literatures at the University of Paris we owe the foundation of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, which so long anticipated the "settlement work" of the modern time and have done so much for the poor in large cities ever since, who was very close to Ampère and indeed lived with him for a while, said that, no matter where conversations with him began, they always led up to God. The great French scientist and philosopher used to take his broad forehead between his hands after he had been discussing some specially deep question of science or philos

lities, his science, his faith, his charity to the poor which was proverbial, and the charming geniality of his character, as

ed for us. He prayed before the same altars before which Descartes and Pascal had knelt; beside the poor widow and the small child who may have been less humble in mind than he was. Nobody observed the regulations of the Church more conscientiously, regulations which are so hard on nature and yet so sweet in the habit. Above all things, however, it is beautiful to see what sublime things Christianity wrought in his great soul; this admirable simplicity

t "A number of things of which I had no hint at all at the beginning of my researches have come to take the place of my original purpose and compensate for it." When he undertook his next work he foresaw that he might not be able to finish it; he had hoped against hope that he would, and in the preface to the first volume he declared that he would devote himself to it at every possible opportunity and that he hoped and prayed that "God would spare him to complete it." This simplicity of confidence in the Almighty is indeed a striking characteristic of the

pile is a very great invention. Volta was much more, however, than merely an ingenious inventor. He was a great scientist who made discoveries not only in electricity but in various other branches of physical science. He was one of the eight

m being a doubter in matters religious, his scientific greatness seemed only to make him readier to submit to what are sometimes spoken of as the shackles

ds and did not care to scandalize his {22} neighbors and especially the poor folk around him in his country home, whom he did not want to be led by his example into giving up what he knew to be the most fruitful source of consolation in the trials of life, rather than because of sincere conviction. Volta, having heard this report, deliberately wro

the lively hope of attaining eternal life. I recognize my faith as a gift of God, a supernatural faith. I have not, on this account, however, neglected to use all human means that could confirm me more and more in it and that might drive away any doubt which could arise to tempt me in matters of faith. I have studied my faith with attention as to its foundations, reading for this purpose books of apologetics as well as those written with a contrary purpose, and trying to appreciate the arguments pro an

January 6, 1815,

e that seem destined to enduring interest, had doubted in the midst of his trials and hardships the presence

nged deeper than others into the secrets of the Creator, teach me the road that will lead me to the light.' And the old man made answer: 'I too have doubted, but I h

er they are as original workers in the medical sciences the more emphatic their expressions of their belief in religion and its efficacy in the relie

nvinced Christian and saw nothing in scientific truth inimical to the Christian faith. In

ceased to spread and operate in mankind-since physical doctrines,

ll never perish; who has given a power to man to acquire that most precious of his possessi

described by him has been named, in answer to the question as to the attitude of scientists toward religion said: "You will find among scientific men very few who attack either theology or religion. The attacks imputed to them ar

the physicians of Great Britain, in his Harveian Oration expressed himself very definitely in this matter of the relations

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of God discovered by man; by learning the natural laws he attaches effects to their first cause, t

d it and endeavor to unravel its mysteries; but the Alpha and Omega we know not. Enough for us to look at what is lying around us;

ation of the nineteenth century. It has been said that where there are three physicians there are two atheists, and perhaps this may be true among the smaller fry of the profession, but it certainly is not among the most distinguished members of it. Such men as Pasteur, Lord Lister, Robert Graves, Corrigan, La?nnec, Claude Bernard, Johannes Müller, are the outspoken contradiction of

the Bible is tested the more it is found to be made up of historical documents. Moreover, it is recognized that the Bible, as a record of truths, never f

the facts of Science and the essential teachings of the Christian religion there is never any real opposition; and by the 'Christian Religion' I mean the religion of Chri

esident of the British Gynecological Society, summed up the answer to the question "C

ritten within thirty years of our Lord's crucifixion and must have been 'received' by St. Paul immediately on his conversion." Any one who will turn to that chapter of First Corinthians wi

s to the contrary, have paralleled physici

sions as a younger man that showed his deep and even devout belief in religion, wrote somewhat later a defense of atheism on scientific grounds. Some years afterwards, in th

of any kind. 'Depart from me' has always been the sentiment of such. On the other hand, those in whom the religious sentiment

"is usually due to indolence, often to pr

ence. Professor George Boulger, whose work has been mainly done in botany and who was a fellow of a number of the scientific societies of England and v

about to Religion.' With Newton I am content to 'seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undi

inal Newman once said, that hundreds of difficulties may not make a single doubt. Profe

t is at the very base of the problem that the unsolved mystery shows itself insoluble. Force, Matter, Life, Thought, Will,-what are they, whence come they? Science deals with their phenomena, their manifestations. With John Ray I would term the study of nature a pious duty, one suited to a Sabbath day and not {29} improbably one of the main occupations

arted by the specialists and coordinated it for the purpose of finding the philosophic conclusions to be drawn from it all as to

that wave of skepticism which spread over Europe shortly after the "silly seventies" when so many even of the well-informed thought that natural selection was going to explain everyt

er life to mankind. Nothing but this can sustain, guide and satisfy all lives, control all characters and unite all men. True religion must rule

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shadowy belief in a vaguer power that made for righteousness, but a very definite personal relatio

dispensable need of true religion grew stronger in my mind, I more and more came to feel that religion would end in vague sentimentality unless it has an object of devotion distinctly grasped by the intellect and able to kindle ardent emotions. The nature-if not the name-of the S

ght in our time were quite sure that agnosticism would be the only mode of intellectual reaction which the educated man could possibly think of allowing to take place in him by the time the year of grace 1920 had come. Instead agnosticism, like so many other movements of similar {31} kind founded on human thinking, in accord

Only, instead of the awful earnestness of the inquiring youth, they often affect an indifference to the great problems which oppress him. As though we could be indifferent to the highest interests of the human spirit! So long as life lasts, so long must we strive to grasp the ultimate truth of things. To shut o

not be reached very clear. It has been of immense value in adding to the knowledge of mankind and in giving science particularly a command over principles that would otherwise seem impossible. Religion requires {32} faith to complete it. Knowledge can never mor

ieve?" by insisting that belief in the hereafter is the most preci

. When Paul first preached it in that sublime song of triumph over death, which has so often thrilled us to the marrow as we stood round the coffined dea

t War, so that men are readier to be swayed by religious influences than ever before. The more one studies the problems of health of mind and of body connected with religion, and the strong factor that it is for the making of character, th

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