58 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



Association that respect and general attention which 

 it deserved, and which at York it amply received. 

 To the Church, therefore, the British Association is 

 deeply indebted ; and convinced as I am that true 

 religion and true science ever lead to the same great 

 end, manifesting and exalting the glory and goodness 

 of the great object of our common worship, I trust 

 that the firmer the Association is established, and the 

 more influential it becomes, the more willing and the 

 more efficient an ally it will prove in the cause of 

 religion. ' 



It is scarcely possible to assert that that hope 

 has been fulfilled, at least directly ; and the first dis- 

 pute of the nature under consideration in which the 

 Association became involved was not merely be- 

 tween science and religion, but one which divided 

 the clergy themselves. On the one hand, we find a 

 divine of some distinction endeavouring (on the most 

 charitable view) to adapt scientific reasoning to his 

 own conception of Christian teaching ; on the other, 

 eminent cultivators of science, of his own cloth, are 

 his principal opponents. 



THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH 



The Very Rev. William Cockburn, D.D., Dean of 

 York, might have been a true descendant of Cosmas 

 Indicopleustes. Cockburn was obsessed with the be- 

 lief that the statements of Holy Scripture in regard to 

 the creation of the earth were being controverted by 

 the doctrines of geology, particularly as enunciated 

 by Buckland in the famous Bridgewater Treatise. 

 In 1838 he had published ' A Letter to Professor 

 Buckland, concerning the Origin of the World/ and 



