1 8 Science Religion and Reality 



XVI 



This point of view, for those who are prepared to take it, may 

 help to eliminate some of the chief causes of conflict between 

 science and rehgion. In times not far distant there were men 

 devoted to religion who blundered ignorantly into science, and 

 men devoted to science who meddled unadvisedly with religion. 

 Theologians found their geology in Genesis ; materialists sup- 

 posed that reality could be identified with the mechanism of 

 matter. Neither procedure is to be commended ; nor is it by 

 these paths that the unsolved riddle of the universe can best be 

 approached. A science which declares itself incompatible with 

 religion, a religion which deems itself a substitute for science, may 

 indulge in controversies as interminable as they are barren. But 

 there is a better way ; and the writers of the following essays, 

 each by his own methods, each from his own point of view, have 

 ably endeavoured to pursue it. 



(Note : — Some of the more controversial portions of this 

 Introduction have been dealt with at greater length in my Gifford 

 Lectures, 19 14 and 1923.) 



