106 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



turies, have flowed into channels of deity. The forms 

 which they have taken have been in large measure de- 

 termined by this idea of God or gods. To imagine, 

 as many people do, that religion will cease to exist is 

 to be lamentably illogical. The religious emotions 

 are a natural product of man's nature. Robbed of 

 the outlet of deity, they will find other outlets. No 

 longer moulded by the idea of God, they will be 

 moulded by other concepts, and will manifest a fresh 

 evolution into new forms. And chief among the con- 

 cepts which will mould this new evolution will be the 

 concepts of science. For knowledge is inevitably the 

 most important raw material of theology. 



Can we venture on any prophecy as to the lines 

 which the reconstruction will take? I think we can, 

 although with the proviso that all we can hope to see 

 is the beginning of a development whose end may, 

 and doubtless will be, as different from its beginning 

 as is modernist Christian theology from ancient Egyp- 

 tian polytheism. Science is yet young. In the coming 

 centuries there are bound to be radical alterations in 

 our ideas about mind, and its place in the scientific 

 scheme. 



The first, and in a way, most important ingredient 

 of any religion congruous with science must be a rev- 

 erent agnosticism concerning ultimates, and, indeed, 

 concerning many things that are not ultimates. Man 

 is a limited and partial creature, a product of material 

 evolution. He is a relative being, moulded by the 

 struggle to survive in particular conditions on a par- 

 ticular planet. We have no grounds for supposing 

 that his construction is adapted to understand the 

 ultimate nature or cause or purpose of the universe, 



