Thunders of applause greeted the right reverend theologian as he concluded--he happened to be a bishop, the direct ancestor in regular apostolical succession of a late prelate who inherited among other valuable qualities the very argument which closed the speech above quoted--and Galileo, the foolish believer in facts and the heretical student of mere nature, turned away with a sigh from trying to convince them, and contented himself with the fact he knew, and which must surely announce itself in the long run. _E pur si muove!_ Fear not, noble martyr of science: facts alter not to suit theologies: many a one may fall crushed and vanquished before the Juggernaut-car of the Church, but "God does not die with His children, nor truth with its martyrs;" the natural is the divine, for Nature is only "God in a mask." So, looking down at that first great battle-field between nature and revelation I see the serried ranks break up and fly, and the excommunicated student become the prophet of the future, Galileo the seer, the revealer of the truth of God.
It is eternally true that nature must triumph in the long run. Theories are very imposing, doubtless, but when they are erected on a misconception the inexorable fact is sure to assert itself sooner or later, and with pitiless serenity level the magnificent fabric with the dust. It is this which gives to scientific men so grave and calm an attitude; theologians wrangle fiercely and bitterly because they wrangle about _opinions_, and one man's say is as good as another's where both deal in intangibles; but the man of science, when absolutely sure of his ground, _can afford to wait_, because the fact he has discovered remains unshaken, however it be assailed, and it will, in time, assert itself. When nature and revelation then come into contact, revelation must go to the wall; no outcry can save it; it is doomed; as well try and dam the rising Thames with a feather, as seek to bolster up a theology whose main dogmas are being slowly undermined by natural science. Of course no one nowadays (at least among educated people, for Zadkiel's Almanac I believe still protests on Biblical grounds against the heresy of the motion of the earth) dreams of maintaining Bible, _i e_., revealed, science against natural science; it is agreed on all hands that on points where science speaks with certainty the words of the _Bible must be explained so as to accord with the dictum of nature_; _i e._, it is allowed--though the admission is wrapped up in thick folds of circumlocution--that science must mould revelation, and not revelation science. The desperate attempts to force the first chapter of Genesis into some faint resemblance to the ascertained results of geological investigations are a powerful testimony to the conscious weakness of revealed science and to the feeling on the part of all intelligent theologians that the testimony graven with an iron pen on the rocks cannot be contradicted or refuted. In fact so successfully has science asserted its own preeminence in its own domain that many defenders of the Bible assert loudly, to cover their strategic movement to the rear, that revelation was not intended to teach science, and that scientific mistakes were only to be expected in a book given to mankind by the great Origin of all scientific law. They are freely welcome to find out any reasons they like for the errors in revealed science; all that concerns us is that their revelation should get out of the way of advancing science, and should no longer interpose its puny anathemas to silence inquiry into facts, or to fetter free research and free discussion.