8 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE 



and thought on both sides becomes clearer, it 

 is found that both religion and science stand 

 out as a united whole purified by the removal 

 of the dross and more brightly radiant in 

 intrinsic beauty and loveliness. 



Seventy years have elapsed since Macaulay 

 made his famous pronouncement in his 

 remarkable essay on Ranke's " History of 

 the Popes," that neither natural theology 

 nor revealed religion is a progressive science, 

 and the advances in religious thought and 

 scientific knowledge during those seventy 

 years have alike refuted his position, and 

 shown that religion as much as any science 

 is progressive in its nature, and that man's 

 religious thought broadens with the flight 

 of time. 



When new scientific facts are suddenly 

 thrown in amongst old pre-conceived ideas of 

 divinity, there may at first appear discords, 

 and zealous champions of natural science, and 

 of religious knowledge, fly to arms and 

 indulge in acrimonious polemics ; but, as time 

 advances and things that are crude and 

 adventitious are thrown away on each side, 

 it is discovered that science has added a new 

 beauty to religion, or rather revealed a beauty 

 that was there all the while, but concealed 

 by misconception, or by lack of knowledge. 



