MODIFICATIONS IN THE IDEA OF GOD, ETC. 57 



ordinary natural law. But though this might have been an 

 excellent reason for calling on religious teachers to modify 

 their language, it did not justify scientific discoverers in pro- 

 claiming a blank materialism. If order and law had been 

 proved to reign in the material Avorld to an extent which 

 men in past ages had never suspected, it did not follow that 

 order and law were to be enthroned in the place of Him from 

 whom they proceed. Yet a very considerable number of men 

 of science, some fifty years ago, ignored a first cause 

 altogether, and confined themselves entirely to the observa- 

 tion of secondary causes, wliile some very positively and 

 defiantly declared that in matter all the causes of phenomena 

 might be found. Divines, on the contrary, in tlieir hostility 

 to this sweeping conclusion, endeavoured to discredit 

 scientific theories altogether, and the antagonism between 

 religion and science thus became acute. But by degrees 

 both parties began to reconsider their position. Divhies 

 lost their suspicion of scientific research, and scientists (I fear 

 I cannot avoid the word) began to see that there must be 

 some forc;e behind matter.* Many of those who at first Avere 

 loud in their defence of materialism subsided into silence on 

 this point, and while admitting that their adversaries had a 

 better case than they at first supposed, preferred to suspend 

 their judgment on questions so tremendous as the origin of 

 all things. Others, again, after many painful and agonizing 

 struggles, found thtnnselves at laot able to accept the 

 Christian faith.f They did this with the less difficulty, 

 because it became clear that, in the simple and true sense of 

 the word, evolution was not in the least incompatible with 

 Christianity. By evolution I do not of course mean the 

 doctrines of Mr. Darwin. It is not my intention to discuss 

 the Darwinian theory of evolution. I beHeve that it is 

 now disputed on many grounds. The hold it obtained for a 

 time was due to the craving of human nature for certainty, 

 and the tendency, in a restless, busy, and impatient age, such 

 as this is, to imagine that certainty is to be obtained by being 

 content j II rare in verba mar/istrL Jt also rested largely on the 



* "111 our endeavours to understand the wonders of nature, we have 

 ever brought before us tlie fact that thei'e are innumei^able mysteries 

 which can never be accounted for by the operations with which science 

 makes us familiar, but wliich demand the intervention of some Higher 

 Power than anything that man's intellect can comprehend." Sir E. S. 

 Ball, Trans. Vict. Inst. vol. xxxiii, p. 19.— Ed. 



t The case of Dr. Romanes will occur to every one. 



