JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION

RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES OF COLLEGE TEACHING

IN the pursuit of wisdom the teacher of science must find the opportunity to convince the student that beyond the areas covered by science and scientific conclusions, beyond the testi- mony of history, there are areas of truth which mpplement those of knowledge to yield sapienlia. These embrace art, literature, philosophy, and religion. They include emotional and symholio conclusions which require discipline and training no less than those activities practiced in the laboratories, require a oritical appreciation that can estimate the ultimate work of an art, of music, of literature, of all forms of effort that can lead to valid emotional reactions. The emotions will need to be fortified by a disciplined capacity for ethical, philosophical, and religious conclusions. The urgent need is not for the science specialist but for the liberally educated man. Such a man will recognize the necessity for a. return to unity in plaoe of a supposed dicho- tomy between scientific techniques on the one hand and moral idealism and religious faith on the other. There is no necessary reason why a scientific world eivilieatian need he sundered from a universal religious faith. The rationdiem that is necessary to the ordering of the material world in the minds of men need not be divorced from a religious approach ordering human life toward spiritual ends. Indeed, it may be urged that a fusion of

the two into a common unity is the signal need 4 the world of today to resolve the stresses and strains. Unless we can ennoble the material realities that are available to us with the spiritual realities that are even more fundamental the outlook is dark indeed. I t is the age-long struggle for primacy between the material and the spiritual. Now, when man's capacity for control over the material through science is becoming ever more potent, it is even more essential that he pursue with equal intensity the principles oi a spiritual order. Somehow or other the teacher of science must communicate in his teaching, in his work, in his life, the truth that our physical universe can go do- into physical death unless we can at the same time make of it a sacramental universe. In the dark days of our time there will be many oppor- tunities for all of us to trace out a11 the implications of the ward "sacrifice." Death and wounds, hurt and pain, economic lass, long hours of toil. Something will have escaped us if we fail to recognize, beyond all the material considerations, something in the word that goes hack to its Latin roots: sacrum facere; in making sacred our daily effort and toil in the laboratory, the lecture hall, the factory, or workshop we can achieve the unity of life and the fsith in the future that areessential for well-being. "Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to tbevery end."

Hugh S. Taylor