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Show SCIENCE AND TRUE RELIGION. One of the commonest charges of the ignorant against the Church is that science is forbidden to its votaries; science, that is, as a factor in human belief. Hundreds of instances could be cited to disprove dis-prove the charge, but a recent book, the biography of Louis Pasteur, the greatest of modern scientists, is of itself enough to show that science and true religion go hand in hand. Pasteur, as the world knows, revolutionized all existing theories of a certain class of diseases by his discovery that they originated with and were transmitted by germs. To him primarily is due the credit for that marvelous discovery in surgery, the application of antisepsis. Before the great Lister applied this method of treatment in surgery a very large proportion of operations were fatal because the simplest wounds became infected, blood-poisoning followed, and the patient died. After Lister inaugurated his method and it was adopted by the profession, the percentage of mortality in surgery decreased amazingly. Curiously enough, Pasteur's studies which led to his greatest triumph, began in a, controversy with other scientists, who believed in the spontaneous origin of certain forms of life which appeared in fermented substances. Pasteur proved the fallacy of the theory, and when he had done so, he declared his belief that no man who had studied life as he had could doubt the existence of a Divine First Cause. Under governmental auspices he studied the diseases of silk-worms, which were ruining the silk industry of France. The remedies he devised saved the industry and with it prevented the loss of millions mil-lions of dollars. Similarly he saved the sheep and cattle of his country from extinction, applying his wonderful knowledge to what must have seemed a commonplace business, but which he accounted of the greatest importance, because it meant the salvation sal-vation of his countrymen from suffering and loss. . Curiously enough, he got his first inkling of the germ theory as applied to human disease from his studies of fermentation in beer and yeast; and following fol-lowing the suggestions he found here, he evolved the scientific formulae which have led to the discovery of cures for diphtheria, for rabies, and for typhoid fever. To him is due the primary knowledge that has made the extinction of yelow fever possible; and to him must be attributed the first impulse toward sanitation and preventive medicine which is prolonging the life of the human race and stripping disease of its worst terrors. Vet and this is the gist of the case this man, the greatest of all scientists, was a devout Catholic from his boyhood. He was unostentatious in his religion, as he was in all the affairs of life; he had no quarrel with men who had other beliefs; he was content to follow his own cdnvictions, sure of their foundation on the rock of fact; and to his profound worldly knowledge was added the certainty of an immortal life, to which the teachings of his Church would lead him. His studies never misled or confused con-fused his mind; it never occurred to him that material mate-rial things could be the end-all of human existence. He discerned with his magnificent intellect the essence es-sence of the spiritual life, and to him it was infinitely infi-nitely more important to achieve greatness of soul than greatness of any material kind. No, the true religion has no conflict with science, as Pasteur proved in his own life. On the contrary, genuine science is but a means of confirming con-firming the eternal truth on which real religion is founded. |
