110 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



that their relation with the world at large is no longer 

 confused and meaningless, but right and significant. 

 And any religion worthy the name will help them to- 

 wards this end.^ 



What, then, is the picture which science draws of 

 the universe to-day, the picture which religion must 

 take account of (with due regard, of course, for the 

 fact that the picture is incomplete) in its theology and 

 general outlook? It is, I think, somewhat as follows. 

 It is the picture of a universe in which matter and 

 energy, time and space, are not what they seem to 

 common sense, but interlock and overlap in the most 

 puzzling way. A universe of appalling vastness, ap- 

 palling age, and appalling meaninglessness. The only 

 trend we can perceive in the universe as a whole is a 

 trend toward a final uniformity when no energy will 

 be available, a state of cosmic death. 



Within this universe, however, on one of the smaller 

 satellites of one of its millions of millions of suns, a 

 different trend is in progress. It is the trend we call 

 evolution, and it has consisted first in the genesis of 

 living out of non-living matter, and then in the steady 

 but slow progress of this living matter toward greater 

 efficiency, greater harmony of construction, greater 

 control over, and greater independence of, its envi- 

 ronment. And this slow progress has culminated, in 

 times which, geologically speaking, are very recent, in 

 the person of man and his societies. This is the ob- 

 jective side of the trend of life; but it has another 

 side. It has also been a trend toward greater activity 



2 The following pages are reprinted by the courteous permission of 

 the Atlantic Monthly. 



