Religion and Science 231 



as a child of God. If we are trying to give a religious 

 interpretation of man, we must not fall into the error 

 of Dr. John Lightf oot, an eminent Hebrew scholar in 

 his day — the time of the Westminster Confession — 

 and likewise Vice-Chancellor of the University of 

 Cambridge, who maintained that man was created by 

 the Trinity on October £5, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock 

 in the morning. 



What is wrong is not so much that 400,004 b.c. is 

 nearer the facts than 4004; the larger error is in 

 mingling with the transcendental idea of man's rela- 

 tion to the divine purpose a particular concrete de- 

 scription. For the latter cannot be given except by 

 science. In short, we must not try to speak two lan- 

 guages at once. Empirical formulae we know, and 

 transcendental concepts we know, but they will not 

 blend. 



We had some years ago the pleasure of a short talk 

 with a well-known poet who is not less remarkable as 

 a man of practical affairs. He has done big things 

 for his day and generation. In the course of conversa- 

 tion he said, if we understood him aright, that when 

 he disciplined his spirit he could see fairies and so- 

 journ in fairyland. The environment of which he 

 became eye-witness was different from that of our 

 everyday life, and was not even a reconstruction of 

 it on a new pattern. In any case, fairies were as real 

 to him as microscopic little people are to us in our 

 zoological laboratory. As we listened to his story we 

 felt that, as naturalists, we had nothing to say; for 

 the poet did not obtrude his fairies into the universe 



