The clergy vindicated from the charge of hostility to the diffusion of science : being an answer to the pamphlet of Mr. H.G. Wright / by a phrenologist.

  • Phrenologist.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The clergy vindicated from the charge of hostility to the diffusion of science : being an answer to the pamphlet of Mr. H.G. Wright / by a phrenologist. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/16 (page 9)
    so called.” But there are many heathen and savage countries where no such preparatory process is requisite. Mr H. G. Wright, indeed, quotes the experience of a Mr Timothy Flint, a missionary among the North American Indians, to prove that the mere preaching of the Gospel can produce no impression on uncivilized nations ; but the history of the Moravian Missions in Greenland tells a very different tale. 64 When their mis¬ sionaries,^ says Mr Bridges in his work on the Christian Mi¬ nistry, 44 explained to the sottish Greenlanders the nature and perfections of God, and his just claims upon his creatures, the poor heathen were bound up and frozen, like their own icy mountains. But, in reading to them the affecting scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary, their hearts began to melt in tender¬ ness, contrition, faith, and love. They begged to have the story repeated, and it was to them as 4 life from the dead.’” That secular knowledge alone is no guarantee for the strength of moral and religious principle, is a fact as well established as any truth in science, and we leave Mr H. G. Wright to explain why it is, if 44 mere secular knowledge” impart such a strong bias towards religion as he alleges, that so large a proportion of scientific men of eminence have been deists ? Innumerable instances might be adduced in proof of our position, but we need only refer to the state of literature and science in France immediately prior to the Revolution, than which we could not quote a case more in point. And Mr H. G. Wright must be aware that, by some individuals, and these, too, Phrenologists, Mr Combe's philosophy is thought, in some of its features, to bear a close resemblance to that which prevailed in France at this period. The truth is, that, so long as science and religion go hand in hand, they are mutually serviceable to each other; but that if the former be unaccompanied by the latter, and gains an entrance into minds which have not previously been visited by religion, we behold nothing but melancholy examples of the apostolical aphorism, that 44 knowledge puffeth up,” and there¬ by engenders a spirit of hostility to the Gospel. And, as to the revolution which it is supposed that Phrenology will effect in the received interpretations of Scripture, we can only say that we are decided Phrenologists, and instead of thinking that the discoveries of that science controvert the system of theology