226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ments which lie advances against theology are in no way peculiar 

 to himself, or gain any of their strength from his reputation ; they 

 are virtually the arguments of the whole non-Christian world. 

 He may possibly have, on some points, views peculiar to himself. 

 He may also have certain peculiar ways of stating them. But it 

 requires no great critical acuteness, it requires only ordinary fair- 

 ness, to separate those of his utterances which represent facts 

 generally accepted, and arguments generally influential, from 

 those which represent only some peculiarity of his own. Now, all 

 this is true not of Prof. Huxley only. "With various qualifica- 

 tions, it is equally true of writers with whom Prof. Huxley is ap- 

 parently in constant antagonism, and who also exhibit constant 

 antagonism among themselves. I am at this moment thinking of 

 two especially — Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 

 Mr. Harrison, in his capacity of religious teacher, is constantly 

 attacking both Mr. Spencer and Prof. Huxley. Prof. Huxley 

 repays Mr. Harrison's blows with interest ; and there are certain 

 questions of a religious and practical character as to which he 

 and Mr. Spencer would be hardly on better terms. But, under- 

 neath the several questions they quarrel about, there is a solid 

 substructure of conclusions, methods, and arguments, as to which 

 they all agree — agree in the most absolute way. What this agree- 

 ment consists in, and what practical bearing, if taken by itself, it 

 must have on our views of life, I shall now try to explain in a 

 brief and unquestionable summary ; and in that summary, what 

 the reader will have before him is not the private opinion of these 

 eminent men, but ascertained facts with regard to man and the 

 universe ; and the conclusions which, if we have nothing else to 

 assist us, are necessarily drawn from those facts by the necessary 

 operations of the mind. The mention of names, however, has this 

 signal convenience — it will keep the reader convinced that I am 

 not speaking at random, and will supply him with standards by 

 which he can easily test the accuracy and the sufficiency of my 

 assertions. 



The case, then, of science, or modern thought, against theo- 

 logical religion or theism, and the Christian religion in particular, , 

 substantially is as follows : 



In the first place, it is now an established fact that the physical 

 universe, whether it ever had a beginning or no, is, at all events, 

 of an antiquity beyond what the imagination can realize; and 

 also that, whether or no it is limited, its extent is so vast as to be 

 equally unimaginable. Science may not pronounce it absolutely 

 to be either eternal or infinite, but science does say this, that 

 so far as our faculties can carry us they reveal to us no hint of 

 either limit, end, or beginning. 



It is further established that the stuff out of which the universe 



