The antiquity of man from the point of view of religion : in answer to Mr. S. Laing's Modern science and modern thought / by F. Hugh Capron.

  • Capron, F. Hugh (Frederick Hugh), 1857-1955.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The antiquity of man from the point of view of religion : in answer to Mr. S. Laing's Modern science and modern thought / by F. Hugh Capron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be confessed that there is something a little startling in the completeness of the victory which Mr. Laing claims for the cause which he espouses. Religion, he tells us, is not merely defeated, but annihilated. It is not so much that she has ceased to exist, as that she has been proved never to have existed. That venerable Sanction which for so many ages has fanned the virtues and checked the vices of mankind is at length exposed in all her naked unreality—the most hollow and empty fraud that ever mocked the human race. Her whole fabric, we are told, is built upon false foundations ; her first principles are rooted in fallacy ; the Bible not merely is not, but cannot be inspired. There is a dangfer in extremes. The medio tutissimtis ibis of the Poet is the expression of a universal truth. So long as Science confines herself to attacking any of the positions of Religion on the ground that they are not true, she is assuming an attitude which, however much we may resent it, we may perhaps find it difficult to positively discredit. But when, with Mr. Laing, she rashly adopts the extreme course of impugning the Bible as a logical impossibility, she is playing with a weapon which, if unskilfully handled, may by the keenness of its edge endanger the very arm which wields it. An accusation such as that advanced by Mr. Laing leaves Religion no option but to put in a defence. To an Authority which claims to base her doctrines upon Infallibility, and the very breath of