322 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



if indeed they did so in a real and honest though mistaken fear 

 that the truths of rehgion might suffer by these inquiries, he would 

 speak with the utmost tenderness. Feelings such as these, where 

 they did really exist, were so closely allied to all that was sacred, 

 that they should receive no harsh or scornful word from him. But 

 whilst he was thus tender to the men, he was bound to deal fairly 

 with their argument, and this he must contend was utterly futile. 

 Instead of such sensitive fear lest this or that discovery might seem 

 to contradict revelation being a mark of faith, he would contend that 

 it was a mark of the want of faith. True faith wou'd say, " These 

 are God's two voices : both must be true." He who had a secret 

 lurking suspicion that possibly, at last, revelation was not certainly 

 true, he might tremble when he heard this or that discovery, and 

 shrink from the leading of science, lest it should shake his faith ; 

 and thus, therefore, would he (the Dean of Westminster) deal 

 with such honest fears : he would not admit them to be the marks 

 of a strong faith, but he would treat tenderly, as weak believers, 

 those whom they assailed ; and he would endeavor to show to 

 these, their victims, how unreal they in truth were, for most unreal 

 they are. 



There is no opposition between science and religion. Rather, he 

 would contend, was science the offspring of Christianity : Chris- 

 tianity had developed within man the powers he needed to pursue 

 science truly : Christianity, and that only, had given to man the 

 patience, humility and courage which could make him truly a 

 philosopher. Only the christian man could look nature calmly in 

 the face, and reverently and yet boldly compel her to disclose lo 

 him her secret laws. The unbeliever might look at nature as a 

 compound of conflicting powers, bent on capriciously, or with a 

 deeper malice, vexing and tormenting him ; or, with the sneer of 

 the cynic on his face, he might resolve all into a purposeless, law- 

 less chance : but he only who knows of a designer, can trace out 

 the design ; he only who has the interpretation given him by reve- 

 lation can trace in the marred, altered, disfigured works around, the 

 true and all-pervading laws of the one Supreme and Universal 

 Cause. And if, as he admitted, there was a temptation to unbelief, 

 which in one way beset such studies, still this was no argument 

 against their use ; it did but show that, like all other high and noble 

 things, they might be abused as well as used. But the unbeliever 

 who called himself a philosopher, was an unbeliever, not because, 

 but in spite, of his philosophy : just so far as he was truly a philo- 

 sopher, a simple, humble follower of facts, a tracer of God's book 

 of works ; just so far was he in the right temper of mind to be a 

 believer and a tracer of God's other book of revelation. No ! there 

 was no opposition between true science and revelation. This fear 

 was nothing more than the unreal phantom, which, in former and 

 darker times, had led men to try to put down all knowledge of na- 

 ture, lest it should at any time deny their own traditions, which 



