482 Darwinism and Religious Thought 



what we think we ought to think 1 , truly scientific in its employment 

 of hypothesis and verification, and in growing conviction of the reality 

 of its subject-matter through the repeated victories of a mastery 

 which advances, like science, in the Baconian road of obedience. It 

 is reasonable to hope that progress in this respect will be more rapid 

 and sure when religious study enlists more men aflected by scientific 

 desire and endowed with scientific capacity. 



The class of investigating minds is a small one, possibly even 

 smaller than that of reflecting minds. Very few persons at any 

 period are able to find out anything whatever. There are few 

 observers, few discoverers, few who even wish to discover truth. In 

 how many societies the problems of philology which face every person 

 who speaks English are left unattempted ! And if the inquiring or 

 the successfully inquiring class of minds is small, much smaller, of 

 course, is the class of those possessing the scientific aptitude in an 

 eminent degree. During the last age this most distinguished class 

 was to a very great extent absorbed in the study of phenomena, a 

 study which had fallen into arrears. For we stood possessed, in rudi- 

 ment, of means of observation, means for travelling and acquisition, 

 qualifying men for a larger knowledge than had yet been attempted. 

 These were now to be directed with new accuracy and ardour upon 

 the fabric and behaviour of the world of sense. Our debt to the 

 great masters in physical science who overtook and almost out- 

 stripped the task cannot be measured ; and, under the honourable 

 leadership of Ruskin, we may all well do penance if we have failed 

 "in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in the 

 admiration due to the far scope of their discovery 2 ." With what 

 miraculous mental energy and divine good fortune— as Romans said 

 of their soldiers — did our men of curiosity face the apparently im- 

 penetrable mysteries of nature ! And how natural it was that 

 immense accessions of knowledge, unrelated to the spiritual facts 

 of life, should discredit Christian faith, by the apparent superiority 

 of the new work to the feeble and unprogressive knowledge of 

 Christian believers ! The day is coming when men of this mental 

 character and rank, of this curiosity, this energy and this good 

 fortune in investigation, will be employed in opening mysteries of 

 a spiritual nature. They will silence with masterful witness the 

 over-confident denials of naturalism. They will be in danger of the 

 widespread recognition which thirty years ago accompanied every 

 utterance of Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer. They will contribute, in 



1 G. Tyrrell, in Mediaevalism, has a chapter which is full of the important moral 

 element in a scientific attitude. " The only infallible guardian of truth is the spirit of 

 truthfulness." Mediaevalism, p. 182, London, 1908. 



2 Queen of the Air, Preface, p. vii. London, 1906. 



