296 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



Discovery and estimate of Cosmic Purpose — call it 

 God if you wish — is peculiarly the task of science. 

 Every one of us, of course, should seek after God if 

 "haply we might find Him." That Is a necessary 

 spiritual exercise for every man every day. But no re- 

 ligious creed has the shadow of a right to impose on us 

 a formula for that search. We think men of science 

 from Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday and on 

 down the list of great minds and souls, have realized 

 this truth more or less clearly. But, true to their call- 

 ing, perhaps their prejudices, they have not felt quali- 

 fied to undertake the quest of the First Cause, leaving 

 the quest, too often with tongue in cheek, to religion. 

 Contemporary science, as the foregoing has revealed, 

 is not sure that that attitude was either fair or justified. 



And surely the attitude of research is rapidly chang- 

 ing In that particular. The day Is coming when re- 

 search will learn that it Is not only responsible for dis- 

 covery of a fact, but for explanation of the origin and 

 reason for that fact. Scientific opinion has travailed 

 until now; and Is bringing forth one of the finest, 

 noblest forms of life ever conceived. Not In the his- 

 tory of human thinking have we been so near sight and 

 touch of Eternal Realities : They seem all but breaking 

 on us in aspects of grandeur and beneficence. 



The conclusion of some of the best scientific 

 minds civilization has produced, as stated In this dis- 

 cussion, proving that we are not living In a mechanistic 

 dispensation, but In a universe of order and design re- 

 sponding perfectly to the nicety of mathematical law, 

 and of beneficent purpose also, Is not only one of the 

 most Important facts that confronts us — It Is the most 

 Important. It may be the human appeal of Huxley, 



