HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 5*73 



closed, the rubber is drawn out, or stretched across the back, and, if 

 allowed to regain its elasticity, the lids are pulled apart. This experi- 

 ment illusti*ates the way in which the ligament acts in those shells 

 which have the ligament external. 



-- 



THE DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION.' 



III. 



PUTTING aside, then, for the present, supernaturalism and all 

 those views of God which are distinctively Christian, we find a 

 theology in which all men, whether they consider it or not, do actually 

 agree that which is concerned with God in Nature. I do not here raise 

 the question of causes or laws ; let it be allowed that Nature is merely 

 the collective name of a number of coexistences and sequences, and 

 that God has no meaning different from Nature. Let all this be al- 

 lowed, or let the contrary of this be allowed. Such controversies may 

 be raised about the human as well as about the Divine Being. Some 

 may consider the human body as the habitation of a soul distinct and 

 separable from it ; others may refuse to recognize any such distinc- 

 tion ; some may maintain that man is merely the collective name for 

 a number of processes ; some may consider the human being as pos- 

 sessing a free-will and as being independent of circumstances; others 

 may regard him as the necessary result of a long series of physical in- 

 fluences. All these differences may be almost as important as they 

 seem to the disputants who are occupied about them, but after all they 

 do not affect the fact that the human being is there, and they do not 

 prevent us from regarding him with strong feelings. The same is 

 true of the Divine Being. Whatever may be questioned, it is certain 

 that we are in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Being ; except 

 through some of those exceptional perversions of the mind which I 

 described in the last chapter, we cannot help the awe and admiration 

 with which we contemplate him; we cannot help recognizing that 

 our well-being depends on taking a right view of his nature. 



There are two ways in which the mind apprehends any object, 

 two sorts of knowledge which combine to make complete and satis- 

 factory knowledge. The one may be called theoretic or scientific 

 knowledge ; the other practical, familiar, or imaginative knowledge. 

 The greatest trial of human nature lies in the difiiculty of reconciling 

 these two kinds of knowledge, of preventing them from interfering 

 with one another, of arranging satisfactory relations between them. 

 In order of time the second kind of knowledge has the pi-ecedence, 

 and avails itself of this advantage to delay and impede the arrival of 



' From a series of papers in Macmillan's Magazine, on " Natural Religion." 



