MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. 59 
which is of great significance in religious thought. Many of 
my audience at the Pan-Anglican Congress were probably in 
this position. They had probably heard much of the supposed 
defeat of religion by science but comparatively little of the facts 
of science itself, and hence they were genuinely astonished at 
the profusion of the testimony which some of the simplest facts 
of science bear to the fundamental article of religious belief. 
This astonishment is only what might have been expected, 
for during the last century the popular mind was more and 
more influenced by the impression that science had settled 
these questions, and had decided that there was little, if any, 
place left for a Creator of the Universe. This impression was 
largely due to the opinions held by some biologists, and to this 
cause we may, I think, attribute the fact that the supposed 
conflict between science and religion was generally regarded 
very much more as a conflict between biology and religion than 
as a conflict between physics and religion. But as physics was 
not supposed to be antagonistic to religion, the facts of physics 
were, quite naturally, less pressed upon the attention of non- 
scientific persons than the opinions of some biologists, and 
thus it is not surprising that such persons should have come to 
believe that physics has nothing to contribute either con- 
structively or destructively to religious thought. 
I felt that, in these circumstances, it might be profitable this 
afternoon to go over once more the ground covered by my Pan- 
Anglican paper, even at the risk of wearying those members of 
the Victoria Institute who may be familiar with the facts of 
science. I have, however, made some additions to that paper in 
the hope of making the argument clearer. 
I trust that I may be able to make it plain that the progress 
of science has made it very much more difficult than it was in 
the last century for men to profess materialistic views as to the 
world and its meaning. The change which has come about can 
hardly be described more vividly than in the following words 
used by Mr. Sidney Low.* He was writing with reference to 
psychical research, but the words apply almost without change 
to our subject. He says :— 
“Tt is a curious sign of the times, the absorption of one 
eminent man of science after another in the problems of psychical 
research. It points, I suppose, to that feeling of the unsatis- 
factoriness of mere physical science when brought into relations 
with ethical, spiritual, and ontological questions. We are in the 
* The Standard, December, 1909. 
