14 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



maintained that revealed religion was superior to 

 reason, and that the natural man, with his profane 

 sciences, was at enmity with God ? 



Sir Thomas Browne speaks as a theologian when 

 he says that reason is a rebel unto faith, and that 

 " many things are true in divinity which are neither 

 inducible by reason nor confirmable by sense ; " but 

 he spoke as a man of science when he said : "I can 

 cure vices by physic when they remain incurable by 

 divinity ; and they shall obey my pills when they 

 contemn their precepts." Indeed, science and 

 divinity occupy essentially dififerent points of view, 

 in many respects antagonistic points of view. 



Science, in the broadest sense, is simply that 

 which may be verified ; but how much of that 

 which theology accepts and goes upon is verifiable 

 by human reason or experience ? The kind of 

 evidence which theology accepts, or has accepted in 

 the past, is too much like that which led the old 

 astrologer Nostradamus to predict the end of the 

 world in 1886, because in this year Good Friday 

 falls upon St. George's day, and Easter upon St. 

 Mark's day, the very latest date upon which Easter 

 can happen. 



Theology, for the most part, adopts the personal 

 point of view — the point of view of our personal 

 wants, fears, hopes, weaknesses, and shapes the 

 imiverse with man as the centre. It has no trouble 

 to believe in miracles, because miracles show the 

 triumph of the personal element over impersonal 

 law. Its strongest hold upon the mind of the race 



