Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — A Disclaimer. [ARTICLE]

A Disclaimer.

Messrs. Editors: In your notice of my lecture on Science and the Bible, you do me injustice in saying that 1 spent three-quar-ters Of an hour trying to prove the bible and science in conflict, and then brought in the bible as an auxiliary to prove the immortality of the soul. This would have shown ridiculous true: but 1 did no such thing. I was speaking of the absolute impossibility of the common orthodox idea of the resurrection of the natural or physical body on scientific grounds; and mentioned Paul’s teaching the contrary of this—the resurrection of a spiritual body. In the whole lecture I certainly gave no inti wrtion-that the Scriptnrcs were" either plenarily er partially inspired. You say ‘‘Dr. Ritchey evidently has drawn more largely from the revelation , he effects to doubt, for his belief in his own immortality, than from the scientific stndy of lepuloptera.” This is the very opposite of what I plainly said, which was exactly in these words: “I can learn more from the miserable caterpillarand butterfly, as to a future life, than from all the sacred writings, bishops and priests in the world.’’ True I could not get hold of the big scientific word you have extracted through my dullness. Once before I was in the same trouble for a word, in your court house, but never heard that it was charged to my superficiality. I might, while engaged in a train of thought, forget, for the time, your own familiar name. You say “a large and orderly audience listened to me,” etc.; this seems to be exactly, true; but y„u seem to have listened carelessly, or occasionally, or you cculd not have so completely misapprehended my meaning in several particulars, I lay it to misapprehension, for I cap see no reason why you should wish to detract from the value of my efforts, as certainly I don’t pretend to know the half—no, not the tenth part —of it. True I said there were many great truths in the bible. I spoke of the golden rule, and why it was adopted by (Jhriet; but remarked that it had been promulgated five hundred years before ho was born, by an old Chinese philosopher. “It is appointed unto men once to die.” This is revealed in the book of nature; and if there are any inspired truths in the bible they came from the study of this higher book, which gives the only reliable revelations from God. This, with what you correctly told, is the subsi ance of iny lecture in the court house Saturday night before last. 8. W. Ritchey. Our venerable friend has done two XElngsTHe has procured the publication of the substance of his lecture, revised by himself, in a newspaper of respectable circulation; and he has freely used the columns of that paper against its editor, without provoking an unkind reply; but it remains to be seen if the bible is demolished, or if science will establish the doctrine of immortality without its aid. The study of lepidoptera certainly has not done this, even so much as by analogy ; for after passing through the successive stages of caterpillar, chrysalis, and -aatoaLjlleg and resolves irrto an elemen ta? condition beyond which science has not penetrated. Science, without the bible, knows nothing about a postexistence of man or lower animals, though the revealed “book of nature” has been spread wide open before her for ages.