On the Translation and Use of the Psalms for the Public Worship of the Church

W. Robertson Smith
1904 Expository Times  
I05 Osler says that that is all. Was he called to bless? Surely he did not know it, but he came to curse. What is it that the student of science does to himself, not merely to make him incapable of belief in immortality, but capable of such preposterous belief in his fellow-men ? Does Professor Osler honestly think that, when we believe in the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, we are suffering from excess of emotion ? He does not once mention Christ. As if the Resurrection from the dead had
more » ... never been named, he makes his own confession of faith, and says that like Cicero he would rather be mistaken with Plato than in the right with those who deny altogether the life after death. But what business has he, as a student of science, to be content to be mistaken with any man? If his science makes immortality impossible, let him say so and reject the belief in immortality. He does not say so. All through the lecture he seemed to be saying so. He does not say so at the end. He says at the end that science is organized knowledge, and knowledge is of things we see. ' Now the things that are seen are temporal; of things that are unseen science knows nothing, and has at present no means of knowing anything.' If, then, science does not say that belief in the life to come is impossible ; if it merely says that it is outside its province ; why does not Professor
doi:10.1177/001452460401600302 fatcat:gujqhb7tsng6tlxnwz7rxkbw2u