XIII. 

 NATURE AND LAW. 



\The Modem Review, October, 1880.] 



"The laws of light and gravitation," wrote Mr. Atkinson to 

 Harriet Martineau thirty years ago, " extend over the universe, 

 *' and explain whole classes of phenomena ; " and this " explana- 

 tion," according to the same writer, is all-sufficient, " philosophy 

 *' finding no God in Nature, nor seeing the want of any." The 

 "advanced" philosophy of the present time goes still further; 

 asserting that as the progress of science now places it beyond 

 doubt that all the phenomena of Nature — physical, biological, and 

 mental — are but manifestations of certain fundamental " properties 

 " of matter," acting in accordance with fixed laws, " there is no 

 "room for a God in Nature." And scientific thinkers who do 

 not accept this as the conclusion obviously deducible from their 

 recognition of the universality of the "reign of law," are branded 

 as either illogical thinkers, or as cowardly adherents of a bygone 

 superstition — men who are either deficient in the power to reason 

 out the conclusions to which their own premises necessarily lead 

 or have not the courage to face them. 



There can be no question of the influence that is being exerted 

 by the reiteration of these assertions on the intelligent thought of 

 the younger generation. Over and over again has it been pointed 

 out with truth, that whenever science and theology have come into 

 conflict, theology has had in the end to go to the wall. The 

 Copernican system of astronomy has established itself in spite of 

 the thunders of the Vatican. The geological interpretation of the 



