God and Nature Spring 2023
By Marline Williams
It all started when I read a quaint little book by Isabella Alden (aka “Pansy”), the 19th-century’s premier Christian author of children’s Sabbath books and adult temperance novels with a fan base rivaling J.K. Rowling’s. Several of her novels lauded and lionized Chautauqua, the era’s combination Sunday School conference center, cultural watering hole, and Victorian think-tank. Bookworm heaven! A quick Googling confirmed the woodsy retreat for NPR types was still up and running. And since it was only a few hours down the freeway, I took a little daytrip that turned into a bookish time machine, a literary fossil hunt seeking any still-vital DNA of truth.
Chautauqua’s helpful on-hand historian informed me that in 1878, the ambitious summer campground launched America’s longest-running book club, the Chautauqua Literary & Science Circle (CLSC). This correspondence school provided a well-rounded, college-level education aimed at Horatio Algeresque clerks, housewives, and uppity chambermaids. Members took graded finals on foreign languages, hard sciences, art, history, mathematics, etc. The requirements for current members are positively lax comparatively--just read 12 books from their list of 800+ titles. Sign me up! I convinced the arbiters to let me choose my dozen from the original historic list. A few happy eBay purchases and here we are.
It all started when I read a quaint little book by Isabella Alden (aka “Pansy”), the 19th-century’s premier Christian author of children’s Sabbath books and adult temperance novels with a fan base rivaling J.K. Rowling’s. Several of her novels lauded and lionized Chautauqua, the era’s combination Sunday School conference center, cultural watering hole, and Victorian think-tank. Bookworm heaven! A quick Googling confirmed the woodsy retreat for NPR types was still up and running. And since it was only a few hours down the freeway, I took a little daytrip that turned into a bookish time machine, a literary fossil hunt seeking any still-vital DNA of truth.
Chautauqua’s helpful on-hand historian informed me that in 1878, the ambitious summer campground launched America’s longest-running book club, the Chautauqua Literary & Science Circle (CLSC). This correspondence school provided a well-rounded, college-level education aimed at Horatio Algeresque clerks, housewives, and uppity chambermaids. Members took graded finals on foreign languages, hard sciences, art, history, mathematics, etc. The requirements for current members are positively lax comparatively--just read 12 books from their list of 800+ titles. Sign me up! I convinced the arbiters to let me choose my dozen from the original historic list. A few happy eBay purchases and here we are.
in 1878, the ambitious summer campground launched America’s longest running book club, the Chautauqua Literary & Science Circle (CLSC). |
My first pick, W.W. Kinsley’s Science and Prayer, set the tone for the rest of the reading. Influenced by Hollywood, I assumed Victorian scientists and theologians were locked in a century-long death match. That was my first shocker. Turns out that’s a myth—in fact, there was a decided rapport between these two “natural enemies.” Chautauqua welcomed freethinkers of all stamps and championed lively discussions under the main tent; books from both camps made the CLSC list.
Very typically of the times, Kinsley’s compact but chewy 1893 discourse on the obvious compatibility of science and religion combines the era’s high-flown, flourishing prose with microscopic research and mind-over-matter theories. Immediately apparent is that what Victorians lack in data, they make up in luscious verbiage, prose that inundates the reader, stupefying them into a non-combative coma. At least it does for me. Might as well argue with Niagara Falls. Kinsley, like his peers, relies heavily on the ponderous logic of the time—establishing a chain of argument leading the reader inextricably to the correct conclusion. His, of course.
He sets up his case in the first chapter—his five-fold goal:
1) To convince us “that phenomena and the producing forces with their laws or modes of working, brought to light by scientific investigations in the fields of physics and of metaphysics, harmonize perfectly with the Scripture view of prayer, and abound in suggestions of how God can interfere in nature without destroying any force or abrogating a single law.” (See what I mean about the prose?)
2) “That as a fact, He has thus actually interfered again and again.”
3) “That it is not only not presumptuous, but most natural and reasonable, for us to expect that He will interfere for us, insignificant though we may seem to be.”
4) “That He will interfere because we ask Him, doing for us what otherwise He would not have done.”
5) “And, lastly, that He will not in a single instance withhold any real blessing which is asked for in the right spirit, and the bestowal of which lies within the compass of His power.”
And by golly, he does it! Kinsley’s swaggering scholarship is breathtaking, if flawed. It’s clear there’s not the slightest doubt in his mind that any rational, reasonable person will be convinced by his bulletproof responses. A juggernaut of iron-clad arguments accompanies each point, culminating with a writerly “ta dah!” after each.
Here’s the second shocker: The scarcity of his Scriptural references. Waxing eloquent for ages (and pages), Kinsley nestles gingerbread-embellished quotes from contemporary sages and pulls proofs from many disciples of science with magician-like flourishes, but, when it comes to laying out arguments based on Scripture, he oddly falls back on “common sense.” My CLSC reading list teemed with authors who do the same in an attempt to pacify leery 19th C. readers. Apparently, these authors assume Bible verses immediately nullify their arguments and their books would be banned with other moth-eaten credos to the boneyard of traditional faith.
Kinsley’s main argument—that God isn’t quite as omniscient as we think; ergo, He doesn’t see some of our free will-based decisions coming—must have stirred up a lot of dust at the time. But he sticks to his guns on the basis of rational reasoning, with nary a Bible verse in sight. Personally, I could think of about twenty verses that countered his argument, but to what end? He went to his grave happy, no doubt shaking hands with his worthy opponents in Heaven now.
In lieu of Bible verses, Kinsley unleashes beautifully penned, Tennyson-ish flights of fancy—a sort of literary smoke-and-mirrors. Speaking of atoms, for example, he writes: “Over the nature of their being, as well as over the cradle of their birth, there has been thrown a veil of mystery through whose closely woven meshes there comes no ray of revealing light to the anxiously peering eyes of science, and whose hiding folds no hand on earth has power to lift, except the reverent hand of faith.” These “angel-winged expectancies” presage the point where his lively imagination steps back. After such verbal embroidery and in the face of truly impenetrable mysteries, he usually cries “uncle” and retreats, heeding the voice of God who instructs “thus far, but no farther…”.
Victorians love to glory in the century itself, despite its trademark cynicism bred from its passion for all things scientific. Kinsley joins his tribe as he celebrates: “A reaction from this paralyzing skepticism has already set in. A faith fervent as that felt before science had birth, seems destined again to prevail, and to be the outcome of this very spirit of inquiry… Reappearing this time as the ripe result of this nineteenth century’s tireless and fearless research into time’s deepest mysteries, I cannot see how ever again it can lose its hold on the hearts of men.”
Wouldn’t he be surprised?
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10
W.W. Kinsley. Science and Prayer, 1893. CLCS Literature, The Chautauqua-Century Press.
Marline Williams received her preliminary science education observing natural phenomena (read: star-gazing, cloud-watching, lizard-taming). She makes no claims of being a scientist, merely a writer who loves to string connecting threads between God’s word, classic literature, and the cosmos. Her most recent experiment: speculative collisions between 19th-century Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle authors and 21st-century science gurus. Her Bachelors and Masters in English Literature hail from Nazareth College and the University of Rochester, respectively, and she’s currently madly at work on a novel set during the 1970’s Jesus Revolution. Marline welcomes new friends and readers to www.MarlineWilliams.com.
Very typically of the times, Kinsley’s compact but chewy 1893 discourse on the obvious compatibility of science and religion combines the era’s high-flown, flourishing prose with microscopic research and mind-over-matter theories. Immediately apparent is that what Victorians lack in data, they make up in luscious verbiage, prose that inundates the reader, stupefying them into a non-combative coma. At least it does for me. Might as well argue with Niagara Falls. Kinsley, like his peers, relies heavily on the ponderous logic of the time—establishing a chain of argument leading the reader inextricably to the correct conclusion. His, of course.
He sets up his case in the first chapter—his five-fold goal:
1) To convince us “that phenomena and the producing forces with their laws or modes of working, brought to light by scientific investigations in the fields of physics and of metaphysics, harmonize perfectly with the Scripture view of prayer, and abound in suggestions of how God can interfere in nature without destroying any force or abrogating a single law.” (See what I mean about the prose?)
2) “That as a fact, He has thus actually interfered again and again.”
3) “That it is not only not presumptuous, but most natural and reasonable, for us to expect that He will interfere for us, insignificant though we may seem to be.”
4) “That He will interfere because we ask Him, doing for us what otherwise He would not have done.”
5) “And, lastly, that He will not in a single instance withhold any real blessing which is asked for in the right spirit, and the bestowal of which lies within the compass of His power.”
And by golly, he does it! Kinsley’s swaggering scholarship is breathtaking, if flawed. It’s clear there’s not the slightest doubt in his mind that any rational, reasonable person will be convinced by his bulletproof responses. A juggernaut of iron-clad arguments accompanies each point, culminating with a writerly “ta dah!” after each.
Here’s the second shocker: The scarcity of his Scriptural references. Waxing eloquent for ages (and pages), Kinsley nestles gingerbread-embellished quotes from contemporary sages and pulls proofs from many disciples of science with magician-like flourishes, but, when it comes to laying out arguments based on Scripture, he oddly falls back on “common sense.” My CLSC reading list teemed with authors who do the same in an attempt to pacify leery 19th C. readers. Apparently, these authors assume Bible verses immediately nullify their arguments and their books would be banned with other moth-eaten credos to the boneyard of traditional faith.
Kinsley’s main argument—that God isn’t quite as omniscient as we think; ergo, He doesn’t see some of our free will-based decisions coming—must have stirred up a lot of dust at the time. But he sticks to his guns on the basis of rational reasoning, with nary a Bible verse in sight. Personally, I could think of about twenty verses that countered his argument, but to what end? He went to his grave happy, no doubt shaking hands with his worthy opponents in Heaven now.
In lieu of Bible verses, Kinsley unleashes beautifully penned, Tennyson-ish flights of fancy—a sort of literary smoke-and-mirrors. Speaking of atoms, for example, he writes: “Over the nature of their being, as well as over the cradle of their birth, there has been thrown a veil of mystery through whose closely woven meshes there comes no ray of revealing light to the anxiously peering eyes of science, and whose hiding folds no hand on earth has power to lift, except the reverent hand of faith.” These “angel-winged expectancies” presage the point where his lively imagination steps back. After such verbal embroidery and in the face of truly impenetrable mysteries, he usually cries “uncle” and retreats, heeding the voice of God who instructs “thus far, but no farther…”.
Victorians love to glory in the century itself, despite its trademark cynicism bred from its passion for all things scientific. Kinsley joins his tribe as he celebrates: “A reaction from this paralyzing skepticism has already set in. A faith fervent as that felt before science had birth, seems destined again to prevail, and to be the outcome of this very spirit of inquiry… Reappearing this time as the ripe result of this nineteenth century’s tireless and fearless research into time’s deepest mysteries, I cannot see how ever again it can lose its hold on the hearts of men.”
Wouldn’t he be surprised?
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.” Proverbs 9:10
W.W. Kinsley. Science and Prayer, 1893. CLCS Literature, The Chautauqua-Century Press.
Marline Williams received her preliminary science education observing natural phenomena (read: star-gazing, cloud-watching, lizard-taming). She makes no claims of being a scientist, merely a writer who loves to string connecting threads between God’s word, classic literature, and the cosmos. Her most recent experiment: speculative collisions between 19th-century Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle authors and 21st-century science gurus. Her Bachelors and Masters in English Literature hail from Nazareth College and the University of Rochester, respectively, and she’s currently madly at work on a novel set during the 1970’s Jesus Revolution. Marline welcomes new friends and readers to www.MarlineWilliams.com.