SCIENCE AND THE BISHOPS. 353 



the tu quoque device of setting scientific blunders against theological er- 

 rors ; no suggestion that an honest man may keep contradictory beliefs 

 in separate pockets of his brain ; no question that the method of scien- 

 tific investigation is valid, whatever the results to which it may lead ; 

 and that the search after truth, and truth only, ennobles the searcher 

 and leaves no doubt that his life, at any rate, is worth living. The 

 Bishop of Carlisle declares himself pledged to the belief that " the ad- 

 vancement of science, the progress of human knowledge, is in itself a 

 worthy aim of the greatest effort of the greatest minds." 



How often was it my fate, a quarter of a century ago, to see the 

 whole artillery of the pulpit brought to bear upon the doctrine of evo- 

 lution and its supporters ! Any one unaccustomed to the amenities of 

 ecclesiastical controversy would have thought we were too wicked to 

 be permitted to live. But let us hear the Bishop of Bedford. After a 

 perfectly frank statement of the doctrine of evolution and some of its 

 obvious consequences, that learned prelate pleads, with all eai'nestness, 

 against 



a hasty denunciation of what may be proved to have at least some elements of 

 truth in it, a contemptuous rejection of theories which we may some day learn 

 to accept as freely and with as little sense of inconsistency with God's word as 

 we now accept the theory of the earth's motion round the sun, or the long dura- 

 tion of the geological epochs (p. 28). 



I do not see that the most convinced evolutionist could ask any one, 

 vvhether cleric or layman, to say more than this ; in fact, I do not 

 think that any one has a right to say more with respect to any ques- 

 tion about which two opinions can be held, than that his mind is per- 

 fectly open to the force of evidence. 



There is another portion of the Bishop of Bedford's sermon which 

 I think will be warmly appreciated by all honest and cleai'-headed 

 men. He repudiates the views of those who say that theology and 

 science 



occupy wholly different spheres, and need in no way intermeddle with each other. 

 They revolve, as it were, in different planes, and so never meet. Thus we may 

 pursue scientific studies with the utmost freedom, and, at the same time, may 

 pay the most reverent regard to theology, having no fears of collision, because 

 allowing no points of contact (p. 29). 



Surely every unsophisticated mind will heartily concur with the 

 bishop's remark upon this convenient refuge for the descendants of 

 Mr. Facing-both-ways. " I have never been able to understand this 

 position, though I have often seen it assumed." Nor can any demur- 

 rer be sustained when the bishop proceeds to point out that there are, 

 and must be, various points of contact between theological and natu- 

 ral science, and therefore that it is foolish to ignore or deny the exist- 

 ence of as many dangers of collision. 



Finally, the Bishop of Manchester freely admits the force of the 

 VOL. XXXII. — 23 



