Our surprise at seeing lawyers and doctors
engaged in it would be very much less justifiable, for a portion at
least of the training received in these professions is of a
scientific cast, and concerns the selection and classification of
facts, while a clergyman's is almost wholly devoted to the study of
the opinions and sayings of other men. In truth, theology, properly
so called, is a collection of opinions. Nor do these objections to a
clergyman's mingling in scientific disputes arise out of his belief
about the origin and government of the world _per se_, because one
does not think of making them to trained religious philosophers; for
instance, to Principal Dawson or Mr. St. George Mivart. Some may
think or say that the religious prepossessions of these gentlemen
lessen the weight of their opinions on a certain class of scientific
questions, but no one would question their right to share in
scientific discussions.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
Some of the letters from clergymen which have been called out by our
article on the part recently taken by them in scientific discussion
maintain that, although ministers may not be familiar with the facts
of science, many of them are fully competent to weigh the arguments
founded on these facts put forward by scientific men, and decide
whether they have proved their case or not; or, in other words, that
we were mistaken in saying that the theological seminaries did not
afford severe training in the use of the inductive process, and that
it could not be used effectively without knowledge of the matters on
which it was used.
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