SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 13 



" The spiritual world as it stands," he declares, 

 " is full of perplexity. One can escape doubt only 

 by escaping thought. . . . The old ground of faith, 

 authority, is given up ; the new [ground], science, 

 has not taken its place." It is his purpose to give 

 to faith this new ground of science. Up to this 

 time, he says, the spiritual world has been looked 

 upon as outside of natural law. Evolution and 

 revelation have been at swords' points ; he has not 

 merely made peace between them, but he clearly 

 believes himself to have enlisted the forces of the 

 former under the banner of the latter. Science, he 

 says, can hear nothing of a " Great Exception." 

 The present decadence of religion is owing to the 

 fact that it has been too long treated as the great 

 exception — cut off by an insurmountable barrier 

 from the natural order of things. It is now found by 

 this Christian philosopher to be as completely under 

 the dominion of natural law as any branch of physi- 

 cal science. What Jussieu and De CandoUe did 

 for botany in substituting the natural system for the 

 artificial, what Lyell did for geology in getting rid 

 of " catastrophism," what Newton did for astronomy 

 by his law of gravitation, our Glasgow professor 

 flatters himself (rather covertly, to be sure) he has 

 done, or showed the way to do, for theology. He 

 has introduced law and order where before were 

 chaos and " perplexity." 



All this sounds as promising to the man of science 

 as it must sound bewildering and discouraging to 

 the theologian — because, has not theology always 



