BOYS OF HISTORY. less young page, Renaud de Chatillon, she was soon persuaded to join him in the dangerous pastime of flower-picking in the enemy's gardens. Heedlessly they strolled down to the banks of the little river, that flowed through the gardens and washed the walls of Damascus. On and on they wandered, farther and farther from the protection of their camp, until they were soon in the deep mazes of the garden. Suddenly they heard the clash of barbaric music in a little grove beyond them, and before they had time to retreat a dozen yards found themselves surrounded by a swarm of swarthy Saracens. The lady Isabel was soon a struggling prisoner, but the nimble young Renaud, swiftfooted and more wary than his companion, escaped and sped like the wind to King Baldwin's camp, shouting as he ran: "Rescue, rescue from the Infidels!" Out from the Crusaders' camp poured swift and speedy succor, but the Saracens with their young and trembling prisoner escaped, and were soon lost in the deep shadow of the groves. Young Renaud still shouting, rushed into the conncil of the crusading chiefs, and falling at the feet of the king, cried breathlessly: "My lord king, the lady Isabel is prisoner to the Saracens !" "Isa a prisoner!" exclaimed the king, springing to his feet. "Rescue, rescue, my lords, for the sweet little lady of Tyre! Let who will follow me straight to the camp of the Unbelievers!" There was hasty mounting of steeds and bracing-up of armor and settling of casques; shields were lifted high and spears were laid in rest, and followed by a hundred knights, the boy Crusader dashed impetuously from the camp and charged into the thick gardens that held his captive cousin. His action was quicker than the Saracens, who had lingered in the garden, could anticipate They had placed their prisoner in one of the small palisaded towers, which were scattered through the garden for temporary defence. Quick-witted and readyeared, the little lady ceased her sobs as she heard through the trees the war-cry of the knights of the Temple and the ring ing shout: "A Baldwin to the rescue!" 7 Leaning far out of the tower she shook her crimson scarf and cried shrilly, "Rescue, rescue for a Christian maiden !" King Baldwin saw the waving scarf and heard his cousin's cry. Straight through the hedgeway he charged, followed by a dozen knights. A storm of Saracen arrows rattled against shield and hauberk, but the palisades were forced, the swarthy captors fell before the leveled lances of the rescuers, the lady Isabel sprang from the loosened grasp of a dying Saracen into the arms of the king, and the gallant band wheeling round sped back to camp, before the bewildered Infidels could recover from their surprise. But the reaction came full soon, and from every quarter could be seen the flutter of the white bournous, the striped aba, the red and yellow keffiah of the Saracen horsemen. They swarmed from garden and tower and roadway; and through the opened gates of the city fresh troops of horesmen dashed down the wide causeway that crosses the narrow river. With equal speed the camp of the Crusaders is pouring forth its thousands and King Baldwin sees, with the joy of a zealous warrior that the foolish freak of a thoughtless maiden has brought about a great and glorious battle. Rank on rank, with spears in rest and visors closed, the crusading knights charged to the assault. Fast behind them press the footmen, De Mowbray's English archers, King Louis' cross-bowmen, Conrad's spearmen and the javelinmen of Jerusalem. Before the fury of the onset the mass of muffled Arabs and armored Saracens break and yield, but from hedge and tower and loop-holed wall fresh flights of arrows and of javelins rain down on the Christian host, and the green gardens of Damascus are torn and trampled with the fury of the battle. Above King Baldwin's head still streams the sacred banner; his cross-handled sword is dyed with Saracen blood and his clear young voice rings loud above the din: "Christian warriors, fight, fight on as fought our fathers!" "Beausant! rings the cry of the Templars'. "A Baldwin-a Baldwin for Jerusalem!" Shout the boy-king's knights. The Allah il Allah and the wild war-whoops of the Saracens answer back, and the battle rages furiously. Still Baldwin leads the van. Around his swaying standard rally the knights of Jerusalem and the soldiermonks of the Temple. Twice are they driven backward by the fury of the Saracen hosts, and many a valiaut warrior is stretched upon the field. Young Renaud de Chatillon, battling bravely to retrieve his thoughtless action, is forced to yield himself a prisoner, to another lad of eleven—a brown-faced Kurdish boy, who in after years is to be hailed as the conqueror of the Crusaders-Saladin the greatest of the Sultans. The battle wavers, as the Infidel forces thicken and crowd in untold numbers around the French and Palestine warriors. It looks as though they would be forced from the field. The Crescent presses down the Cross, and the shrill "Allah il Allah!" rings out in Infidel victory. But hark! A new war-cry swells upon the air. "A Conrad! Ho, a Conrad! Rescue for the Cross!" Through the tangled and disordered ranks of the French and Palestine cavalry bursts the stalwart German Emperor and a thousand dismounted knights. The Saracen lines fall back, while in bold defiance the sword of the emperor gleams above his crest. As if in acceptance of his unproclaimed challenge a gigantic Saracen emir, sheathed in complete armor strides out before the pagan host, and the fiercely raging battle stops, on the instant, while the two great combatants face each other alone. Their great swords gleam in the air. With feint and thrust and stroke and skilful parry, the champions wage the duel of the giants, till suddenly, in one of those feats of strength and skill that stand out as a marvelous battle-act, the sword of the emperor with a single mighty stroke cleaves through the Saracen's armor-clad body, and the gigantic emir, cut completely in two, falls bleeding at his conqueror's feet. The Turks break in dismay as their champion falls. Young Baldwin rallies his disordered forces, the war-cries mingle with the trumpet-peal and on foot the two kings lead one last charge against the enemy and drive the fleeing host within the city walls. With shouts of victory the Christian army encamp upon the field their valor has conquered and Damascus is almost won. But it was not so to be. The treachery of Baldwin's jealous followers and the disgust of the German and French kings, before the morning of another day came, had robbed the besieging forces of the unity that would have made them easy conquerors. Young Renaud himself was set at liberty to convey a bribe to Bernard, the Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple, whose counsel, prevailing in the morning, divided the armies and protracted the seige, until the Saracens obtained recruits and cut their enemies completely off from necessary supplies, and all hope of capturing their famous city. In the final councils, when it was determined to raise the siege, young Baldwin pleaded in vain for renewed endeavor, and reproached the German king for yielding up so fair an opportunity. But Conrad replied and said: "King Baldwin, thou art a brave and gallant youth. Were are all like thee our swords had not been drawn in vain. But youth and valor may not hope to cope with greed. We are deceived. We have suffered from treason, where it should have least been feared, and more deadly than Saracen arrows are the secret stabs of thy barons of Syria." "Now, by the Forty Martyrs," cried the young king hotly, "what thou dost claim I may not disprove by word; for here have been strange and secret doings. But for the honor of my country and my crown I may not idly listen to thy condemning speech. I dare thee to the battle test, emperor and champion though thou be, Conrad of Germany, there lies my gage." "Brave yonth," said Conrad, picking up the boy's mailed glove and handing it to him with gentle courtesy, "this may not be. For even did not our vows, under the 'Truce of God,' forbid all personal quarrels, it is not for such a noble lad THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. as thou to stand the champion for failure of the Second Crusade traitors." So the victory, almost assured by the intrepidity of the boy Crusader, was lost through the treachery of his followers. King Louis and Conrad, the emperor, returned to their European dominions in anger and disgust, and the mournful 9 was chronicled among the saddest pages of history. But shining out from the darkness of those old crusading days, with a lustre that has not dimmed by time, is the valiant life of this chivalrous, handsome, brave and generous boy Crusader, Baldwin, King of Jerusalem. Amalric. THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE.* NO ONE can deny that in these days the name of science is largely quoted against the teachings of our church. Nor is it, unfortunately, to be doubted that many (especially among those who have not got a testimony of the truth) are sorely perplexed and troubled by the assurances they so frequently hear that the witness of nature contradicts our religion. Some on the strength of these assurances grow weak in their faith and in some rare instances have professed concurrence in those materialistic doctrines which science is said to favor. This is the worst that can happen. More commonly (and it is with special reference to this I wish to deal) many Latter-day Saints distrust science they look at it askance as a dangerous thing—refuse to have anything to do with it, and by so acting they do but give the enemies of the church a cause for rejoicing. "See," men may say, "how true it is that Latter-day Saints fear the light of knowledge and that their church is the inveterate foe of advance ment." and the truth can never contradict nor be contradicted by the truth; error, and error alone, it is which ever can oppose the truth. It is nothing less than an insult to the church to suppose that any amount of light can harm those teachings which claim to spring and which we know do spring from the very Fountain-head of all knowledge and all light. And it is a sorry view to take of God's creation to imagine that the story it tells can do aught but enhance our idea of His power, His wisdom, and His goodness. I purpose in the present paper to sketch very briefly (for the limits allowed me are quite inadequate for the proper treat ment of such a subject) what should be our attitude in this regard. It is very needful that this should be done, for all the trouble of which I spoke comes not from science itself but from those who call themselves its representatives. Science, properly understood, does not and cannot run counter to revealed truth --for the simple reason that both are true *A lecture delivered at Conference of the Y. M. M. I. A., of Bear Lake Stake, in Paris, Sept. 27, 1890. Before I proceed there are two remarks to be made by way of prelude. In the first place by science we mean knowledge gained from the study of the world around us. We do not mean what is but theory or speculation or hypothesis. That which is demonstrated it is scientific to believe-and that alone-and a thing is not demonstrated merely by being asserted and assumed. In the second place faith also means knowledge—knowledge without absolute demonstration. This is a point so absolutely dark to our adversaries that we may easily allow them to obscure it to themselves. They take it for granted that faith has nothing whatever to show for itself, except the authority-the human authority-on which it comes, and that we have absolutely no reason to give on our own behalf for believing as we do. But we need go no further than the Book of Doctrine and Covenants to see how false this is. Faith is a gift of God poured into our souls and shedding upon them a light, such as no natural means of knowledge can bestow. Faith is its own witness to the soul through the overpowering intensity of its light. Argu ment may bring us to faith, but the conviction of reasoning pales beside the brilliancy of the knowledge which faith brings when that free gift is bestowed upon us. The knowledge we acquire by natural processes may be true and sound, but it comes as through a glass darkly, gathered up and conducted to our minds from the glimpses and reflections of truth we detect in the universe. But in the things of faith God speaks not through His works but through Himself; and the humblest and most unlettered soul on which He deigns to set the seal of faith is possessed of a knowledge profounder, surer, and more dear than science can impart to the greatest of philosophers. What are the facts? The corner stone of the agnostic position is of course the evolutionary hypothesis of Mr. Darwin, itself developed and extended by Mr. Herbert Spencer and others. But in regard of this it is to be remarked in the first place that not one man in ten who advocates it has any real conception of what it is. Secondly, confining our attention to those who really understand it. The Darwinian theory may be said to have seen its best days—it is undoubtedly not gaining, but losing ground with men of science. As a summary proof of this assertion, I need only quote Mr. Mivartan authority whose competency to speak on such a question none can deny-who describes the celebrated natural selection theory of Mr. Darwin as a "puerile hypothesis” and again as "the most absurb of absurd explanations." Sir Gabriel Stokes, President of the Royal Society of Great Britain, also remarks with astonishment upon the facility with which eminent men have accepted a theory for which he can discover no adequate demonstration, and which seems to him incompatible with the facts as revealed by science But in the third place-which is more to our present purpose-looked at in itself, it is clear that this theory is not, and cannot be a final settlement of the problem with which it attempts to deal. We start, therefore, naturally and necessarily with the assumption that our religion and faith is the truth, but we must not, therefore, refuse to regard the claims of science. Nature is a book given us by God to read, and the very fact that we can discover so much beauty there and so many marvels is a sure proof that He wishes us to read it. But we may approach its study with our minds at ease. Secure in the calm tranquility of faith, recognizing God's voice in her teachings, we need have no fear of pushing to their utmost consequences all ⚫ discoveries we may make in the realms of science, provided only we be assured that they are TRUE discoveries. And this is the point on which we must assure ourselves when dealing with what comes to us in the name of science, more particularly of, popular science. No doubt science has made giant strides in these latter days, but her advance has not kept pace with the eagerness of some of her followers. They would supplement her teachings with their own, and would have us believe that both claim equal authority. I allude at present-and shall_tion of conscience. They have, it is true, in this paper entirely confine myself to that branch of science which deals with the origin of the world and of man, a branch which may almost be said to have a monopoly of the objections brought against Christian belief; but it is these same objections which the world is taught to consider so formidable. No explanation of the facts of the Universe can be satisfactory which does not explain them all or which, at least, is not compatible with their explanation, and this is just where all purely material theories of evolution conspicuously fail. They cannot even profess to explain the moral order of the world, the distinction between right and wrong, and the obliga attempted to explain all this, but the futility and crude absurdity of the result is enough to stigmatize the hopelessness of the task. And equally impotent is the same science to account for the first beginnings of those forces with which it deals, or the origin of the laws by which they are governed. Here is the great THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. The beginning is the crucial of all, but it is just of this that our so-called science is content perforce to tell us nothing; and then it outrages the name of science which it assumes by expecting our minds to be contented with what it offers as a final explanation. I I gulf which may not be passed by He says: "There are at least three stages mechanical hypotheses. in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action. The first stage is the change from inorganic to organic, when the earliest vegetable cell, or living protoplasm out of which it arose, first appeared. The next stage is still more marvelous, still more completely beyond all possibility of explanation by matter, its laws and forces. It is the introduction of sensation or consciousness, constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdom. Here all idea of mere complication of structure producing the result is out of the question. I will illustrate what I mean by one example which I have sought in the writings of Professor Huxley, whom all will acknowledge as a most capable representative of the unbelieving school. He speaks of the Darwinian theory as having dealt a death blow to the belief in an intelligent Creator. How so? Because to quote his own words, "the existing world. lay potentially in the cosmic vapour," which he assumes to have been its first condition, "and a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted the actual condition of the world of to-day." Now let all this be granted, what then? Whence came that vapour? And whence came the laws by which it would have been possible to calculate what would become of it? Grant that the world in its primordial state was arranged like a musical box to produce a certain harmony, does that diminish the wonder that the harmony is produced, or dispense with the need of an artist to account for it? Yet this is the sort of explanation which in one form or another meets us at every turn, and which is apparently accepted without scruple by thousands in the name cosmic of science. Evidence still more striking than this is afforded by Mr. Wallace-who may just ly claim to be the joint author of the DarIn defence of that winian theory. theory he has lately written a book, wherein, after recapitulating the arguments from observation, by which Darwinism seems to be supported, he proceeds to some reflections of a more fundamental character, which would appear altogether to destroy all claims, on the part of the theory for which he pleads, to be considered a philosophical explanation of that which he attempts to explain. The third stage is the existence in man of a number of his most characteristic and noblest faculties, those which raise him furthest above the brutes, and open up possibilities of almost indefinite advancement. These faculties could not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which have determined the progressive development of the organic world in general." And he concludes with these still more emphatic words: "These three distinct stages of progress, from the inorganic world of matter and motion up to man, point clearly to an unseen universe-a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate. We do an injury to science when we assume towards its advances an atti tude purely defensive. Not only does it not obscure the fundamental truths of natural theology, but it "points clearly" to the great first cause, from whom alone could come all that with the investigation of which it is concerned. It has been well said that "the law of the conservation of energy has made atheism unscientific." The same may be said of recent researches into the past history of the earth's rotation. By each of these roads science leads us to recognize a condition of things in "the begining" such as none of the forces we find in nature could have produced and which indeed they cannot even maintain. The machine of the universe may be said to be as a clock which goes, it |