316 THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, [xin. 



Butler, and Paley had laid ; and that if our orthodox 

 thinkers for the last hundred years had followed 

 steadily in their steps, we should not be deploring now 

 a wide, and as some think increasing, divorce between 

 Science and Christianity. 



But it was not so to be. The impulse given by 

 Wesley and Whitfield turned (and not before it was 

 needed) the earnest mind of England almost ex- 

 clusively to questions of personal religion ; and that 

 impulse, under many unexpected forms, has continued 

 ever since. I only state the fact I do not deplore it; 

 God forbid ! Wisdom is justified of all her children, 

 and as, according to the wise American, " it takes all 

 sorts to make a world," so it takes all sorts to make a 

 living Church. But that the religious temper of 

 England for the last two or three generations has been 

 unfavourable to a sound and scientific development of 

 natural theology, there can be no doubt. 



We have only, if we need proof, to look at the 

 hymns many of them very pure, pious, and beautiful 

 which are used at this day in churches and chapels 

 by persons of every shade of opinion. How often is 

 the tone in which they speak of the natural world one 

 of dissatisfaction, distrust, almost contempt. " Disease, 

 decay, and death around I see/' is their key-note, 

 rather than " all ye works of the Lord, bless Him, 

 praise Him, and magnify Him together." There 

 lingers about them a savour of the old monastic theory, 

 that this earth is the devil's planet, fallen, accursed, 

 goblin-haunted, needing to be exorcised at every turn 

 before it is useful or even safe for man. An age which 

 has adopted as its most popular hymn a paraphrase of 

 the mediaeval monk's " Hie breve vivitur," and in 



