THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1886. 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. 



By JOHN BUEKOUGHS. 



ONE of the latest phases of the religious thought of the times seems 

 to be a desire to get rid of, or to explain away, the supernatural 

 — at least to reclaim and domesticate it and convince mankind that 

 it is not the irresponsible outlaw Ave have so long been led to suppose 

 — a desire nearly as marked in the theology as in the science of the 

 day. Thus, the Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Temple), in his Bampton Lect- 

 ures of 1884, on the " Relations between Religion and Science," up- 

 holds the belief in miracles, without calling to his aid the belief in the 

 supernatural as the word is commonly used. A miracle, he urges, may 

 be only some phase of the natural not yet understood ; the turning of 

 water into wine by word of command, or the miracle of the loaves and 

 the fishes, may have been accomplished by the exercise of some power 

 over Nature which is perfectly scientific, but of which man as yet has 

 imperfect control. 



And the Duke of Argyll, in his " Reign of Law," cautions us against 

 assigning an event or a phenomenon to the agency of the supernatural 

 until we are quite sure we understand the limits of the natural — the 

 natural may reach far enough to include all that we have commonly 

 called the supernatural. The latest considerable attempt in this 

 direction is furnished by the work of Professor Henry Drummond on 

 "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," a work which undertakes to 

 demonstrate the naturalness of the supernatural, or the oneness of 

 religion and biology. 



Butler, in his " Analogy," says that there is no " absurdity in sup- 

 posing that there may be beings in the universe whose capacity and 

 knowledge and views may be so extensive as that the whole Christian 

 dispensation may to them appear natural ; that is, analogous or con- 

 vol. xxx. — 10 



