94 WALTER AUBREY KIDD, M.R.C.S., F.Z.S., ON 



Uie improved relations which are manifest in the opening of the 

 twentieth century. 



From this brief review of the outstanding periods of the 

 h'ves of Eeligion and Science, and a knowledge of the previous 

 extent to which the adherents of each so generally misrepre- 

 sented the cause they sought to promote, we can but be 

 thankful that these two great branches of knowledge were 

 not committed to a union before their maturity. If we 

 imagine the injury to Eeligion no less than to Science herself 

 which such a premature union must have entailed, we can well 

 be thankful that the orbits of these two great lights have so 

 long remained separated. What incalculable harm would have 

 been done to the tender larval form of Science had it been 

 encumbered with the ecclesiastical, political, and intellectual 

 shackles which were weighing down the Church of the thirteenth 

 century, many of which she threw off at the Eeformation I 

 And on the other hand, how the credit of the Christian 

 religion would have suffered from any formal association with 

 the pseudo-scientific teaclungs of the Science current in the 

 thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries I For Eeligion 

 to give the imprimatnr of her great authority to such science 

 would have been as disastrous as for Science in her swaddling- 

 clothes to have been under the sway of the current Eeligion. 

 It was better far that some of the apostles, martyrs, and saints 

 of Science should be burned by the Church than that they 

 should compel their Science to agree with the dogmas of the 

 Church on those matters which concerned her teaching. It 

 is only as a truer light shines upon Scriptural interpretation, 

 and scientific knowledge grows more assured, that any true 

 rapprochement can be desired. 



The present j^osition of the relations between Eeligion and 

 Science may be symbolised by the illustration with which this 

 paper opened, and we may fairly claim that, though these two 

 great streams of truth, one in origin, have wandered far apart 

 through the greater part of their remarkable course, they have 

 united in the Ganges-Delta and are nearer to their common 

 goal in the ocean of Truth. 



" This convergence in their essentials of Eeligion and Science 

 is not the least significant fact of modern thought and modern 

 faith." * 



* Spectator, June 20th, 1903, p. 970. 



