TWO PATHS_, ONE GOAL. 



91 



centuries. Finally he shows that this moral law exists whether 

 we accept and obey it or not. Our recognition of it depends 

 on our character and free choice. It is personified in Jesus 

 Christ. 



OUTWAUD liELATIONS OF EeLIGION AND SCIENCE. 



In the earliest and highest civilisations of mankind such 

 Eeligion and Science as existed, and were then possible, were 

 eml:)raced by the Chaldeans, both in Babylon and Assyria. 

 This separate and learned caste retained in their own power 

 and transmitted from generation to generation the mysteries 

 whicli they had inherited. Such a union of Eeligion and Science 

 could be nothing but barren, for both would be of a traditional 

 and fixed character, and if there be one characteristic more 

 peculiar than any other to Science it is the continual develop- 

 ment and change of its methods and results. And this is true 

 to a less extent of Eeligion, and in a different way. The restless 

 Greek mind, with its ever-active inquiry into new things and 

 principles, introduced about the sixth century B.C. a more 

 hopeful attitude of the learned towards the secrets of Nature 

 and the growth of true Science. Such names as those of 

 Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Democritus, and Aristotle, and 

 the Eoman Lucretius, are landmarks in the history of Science. 

 Of these, perhaps, Aristotle, the father of Natural History, is 

 .the most eminent, and has contributed a greater share to the 

 impetus of experimental investigation than any of the ancients. 

 But it is enough to mention such names to show that in that 

 fertile period of the human intellect Science worked in a 

 separate orbit from Eeligion. It were better if it had always 

 continued so, until each of these had reached its maturity in 

 Christianity on the oue hand, and modern Science on the other. 

 In the pre-Christian and early Christian times relations between 

 Eeligion and Science could hardly have been said to exist. 

 From the times of the Ionian philosopliers to that of Itoger 

 Bacon in the thirteenth century. Science made little or no 

 progress, but took rather a retrograde course, for the chains of 

 authority were settling down more and more deeply on the 

 necks of men. The work of Friar Bacon still did not bring 

 Eeligion and Science seriously into conflict ; still less did it 

 open up the common ground wliich in modern days each has 

 discovered, though his Opus Majus was important enough for 

 Dr. Whewell to describe it as the " at once the encyclopicdia 

 and the Novum Orgamtm of the thirteenth century." Still for 

 two or three centuries more the astrologer, forerunner of the 



