202 



NATURE 



[November 6, 1919 



natural, was ipso facto an upholder of error and 

 superstition, an enemy to truth. They were out 

 to sweep the Christian faith away. It might hold 

 out, they thought, for a few decades in obscure 

 circles, but its time had come. They were as 

 cocksure and contemptuous of believers in the 

 supernatural as were the Germans of the English 

 in 1914. I am speaking generally, and chiefly 

 of the smaller fry and hangers-on. But some 

 of the leaders occasionally showed the same 

 tone. 



The attitude of men like Huxley, Adams, 

 Stokes, H. J. S. Smith, Asa Gray, Salmon, Max- 

 well, and others was very different. They never 

 wavered in their sense of the duty of setting truth 

 first, and of the value of knowledge. They saw 

 and welcomed the setting far back the traditional 

 boundary between the natural and the super- 

 natural. But they stopped there. They felt the 

 presence of the unknown, and humbly suspended 

 their judgment, conscious of limitations. 

 Tyndall and his admiring school seemed to feel 

 no such limitations. I remember talking with 

 him at his house on the Bel Alp one glorious 

 evening. He gave some two or three of us a 

 brilliant monologue on his doorstep. But that 

 universe of stars and snow-peaks was to him a 

 magnificent field of exercise of atomic forces. 

 Further knowledge, he doubted not, would estab- 

 lish the fact that we also, with our mental facul- 

 ties, were only items in the same field, products 

 of the same forces. 



Such was the impression given of their beliefs 

 by the dominant and aggressive school of men 

 of science of that time — that freedom in spiritual 

 life, and therefore responsibility, were illusions, 

 though goodness was no illusion. 



Insensibly a change has occurred vi'hich is not 

 easy to define. Perhaps it may be described 

 broadly as the discovery by that scientific world 

 that the sphere of religion is not inherently anti- 

 rational ; that faith, like knowledge, rests ulti- 

 mately on experience; that science has its sphere 

 in the world of matter leading up to forces of 

 unknown origin and nature; and that faith has 

 its sphere in a world of personality leading up to 

 a similarly unknown goal of personality : that 

 their methods are not inconsistent ; and that their 

 goals may be identical. 



There is a pregnant saying of Augustin : " In- 

 terrogate thyself, O man, and make of thyself 

 a step to the things which are above thee." 

 Science has of late begun to do this. Previously 

 it had turned its face to things which are below 

 us. Faith has ever turned its eyes to that which 

 is above us, dim though it is, proofs of the exist- 

 ence of which it finds in its own mental and 

 spiritual faculties — in the sphere of the good, the 

 beautiful, and the true. Through that experience 

 faith is led up to the conviction of a Personal 

 origin of Nature, with whom it is possible for us 

 to be in some communion. 



Miss Jane E. Harrison, in her recent "Conway 

 Memorial Lecture on Rationalism and Religious 

 NO. 2610, VOL. 104] 



Reaction ".(Watts and Co.), has laid us all under 

 a debt by her characteristic frankness on this 

 subject. "If you will pardon," she says, "a 

 personal reminiscence, 1 should like to acknow- 

 ledge my debt as a rationalist to a reviewer. 

 Mr. Clutton-Brock, in reviewing a review of 

 mine^ — I do not think he has read my book — 

 noted, truly enough, that I always implied that 

 religion was obsolete, and only to be examined 

 as a curious survival of man's past. ' And,' he 

 ended, ' it is hardly scientific to lecture on the 

 corpse of religion when all the while religion is 

 alive and laughing at you ' ! It is a staggering 

 experience to learn anything from a reviewer. 

 That sentence made me reel for a moment. 

 When I recovered I determined that religion any- 

 how should not go on laughing at me any longer. 

 So I turned to the study of modern developments, 

 and I confess the result has in some ways sur- 

 prised me." 



This is an illuminating statement. 



There has been also, during the last fifty years, 

 a corresponding change in the attitude of religio as 

 faith towards science. The following points 

 strike me as the most obvious. 



First, the clergy and the educated laity have lost 

 their fear that the predictions of the science of 

 fifty years ago would be verified, and that we 

 should find ourselves in a world of determinism 

 and materialism. 



Secondly, the younger generation of both clergy 

 and laity take it as a matter of course that 

 science has helped faith to extricate itself from 

 many crude mythological forms in which its ex- 

 ponents in pre-scientific days expressed their 

 beliefs. Science has shattered some of our 

 idols, and we are grateful, and shall be more 

 grateful as the years pass. 



Thirdly, all Christians value highly the enor- 

 mous extension of knowledge of the works of 

 God due to scientific labour and genius. More- 

 over, not a few would like to say emphatically 

 that the disinterested search after truth, which 

 is the very soul of science, is in itself a worship 

 of the God of truth. It is faith. It is a religion. 

 It is a consecration. 



Lastly, the ordered reason and method which 

 have won such conquests in the physical world, 

 and revealed fresh sources of power, have helped 

 religious thinkers to see an inexhaustible source 

 of spiritual power in that conception of the divine 

 indwelling life which leads, not to the quietism 

 and the static passivitv of Pantheism, or to a 

 selfish individualism, but to ever-hopeful and 

 ever-fruitful activities for the common good of 

 men. 



May we not in conclusion say that the human 

 and spiritual energies which in the past have 

 i created religion and science have now begun to 

 ' see that they can work as independent allies, 

 urged by a common motive, which one of the 

 two would describe as the elevation of humanity 

 in the scale of being, and the other would call 

 seeking the kingdom of God? 



