DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF. 



181 



revealing Spirit of God, in the discovery of the truth. And 



whatever the truth may be, it is God's truth and therefore preferable 



to human error, however venerable. 



The following communications were then read : — 



The Rev. Chancellor Lias wrote : — There are only a few 



comments which I desire to make on the Bishop's paper, and those 



rather of a confirmatory than of a critical kind. 



1. I cordially agree with him in thinking that there is not, and 

 never has been, the slightest contradiction between revealed religion, 

 properly understood and explained, and modern science, when kept 

 within its proper limits. Science concerns itself with the laws which 

 govern phenomena. With the cause of those laws it does not 

 concern itself. It is here that religion comes in, and tells us that 

 the will of an intelligent Creator is that cause. 



2. I am glad to find myself in agreement with his lordship when 

 he says (p. 170) that modern Biblical criticism has not always been 

 genuinely scientific. No doubt the critic intends his methods to be 

 such. But " the unbridled use of hypothesis " forms, I cannot but 

 think, a very large part of modern critical processes. And the 

 repeated assertion of the finality of such criticism is about as 

 unscientific as any assertion can be. Science is continually correcting 

 its data by the light of new discoveries. The discovery of a single 

 additional inscription might overturn the whole fabric which has of 

 late been so positively affirmed to be "demonstrated beyond 

 contradiction." Such a possibility true scientific criticism would 

 unreservedly admit. 



3. I desire also to associate myself with the remark (p. 169) that the 

 Divine freedom of action is not bound by laws which do not bind 

 the freedom of God's creatures. Natural laws, though irreversible, 

 are, nevertheless, found to be plastic in the hands of finite beings 

 like ourselves. Cannot God control and use them without either 

 "suspending" or "violating" them ^ Some of the greatest 

 scientific discoverers have been unable to conceive of force except 

 as the expression of will. 



4. I have not had an opportunity of studying carefully the recent 

 researches into psychology. But one has always felt confident that 

 a purely mechanical theory of the universe must eventually fail to 

 satisfy the intellectual and moral cravings of humanity. 



Sir Robert Anderson wrote : I cannot but fear that the Bishop of 



