1G2 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE iv 



lates, while, if it adds thereto, I think it obscures, 

 the perfect ideal of religion. 



But what extent of knowledge, what acuteness 

 of scientific criticism, can touch this, if any one 

 possessed of knowledge, or acuteness, could be 

 absurd enough to make the attempt ? Will the 

 progress of research prove that justice is worth- 

 less and mercy hateful ; will it ever soften the 

 bitter contrast between our actions and our as- 

 pirations ; or show us the bounds of the universe, 

 and bid us say, Go to, now we comprehend the 

 infinite ? A faculty of wrath lay in those ancient 

 Israelites, and surely the prophet's staff would 

 have made swift acquaintance with the head of 

 the scholar who had asked Micah whether, per- 

 adventure, the Lord further required of him an 

 implicit belief in the accuracy of the cosmogony 

 of Genesis ! 



What we are usually pleased to call religion 

 nowadays is, for the most part, Hellenised Judaism; 

 and, not unfrequently, the Hellenic element carries 

 with it a mighty remnant of old-world paganism 

 and a great infusion of the worst and weakest 

 products of Greek scientific speculation; while 

 fragments of Persian and Babylonian, or rather 

 Accadian, mythology burden the Judaic contri- 

 bution to the common stock. 



The antagonism of science is not to religion, 

 but to the heathen survivals and the bad philo- 

 sophy under which religion herself is often well- 



