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ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
The New Truth and the Old Faith. By A Scientific Layman. 
London : C. Kegan Paul and Co. 
The conflict, real or supposed, between modern science on 
the one hand and religion on the other, seems to be gaining 
increased importance. We have able writers who seek to recon- 
cile these two great powers ; we have others who are zealously 
striving to widen the breach. This latter tendency is much to 
be deplored, whether it appears in savant or ecclesiastic. We 
must never forget that Science is in a state of rapid change, — 
that many of her theories are merely tentative, and contain much 
that, however probable, is far from being actually and conclusively 
demonstrated. On the other hand, our interpreters of Revelation 
are not altogether guiltless of the charge of clinging to the letter 
rather than to the spirit. They forget the grand principle laid 
down by Galileo, that the Scriptures are not a geological, biolo- 
gical, or physical revelation, but that on all such questions they 
convey, for the most part, the ideas of the ages when they were 
written. It seems to us that if we possess our souls in patience 
we may see some of the ominous discrepancies and apparent 
contradictions vanish away. We doubt whether, in this country 
at least, those who are foremost in real scientific work are anxious 
to “ banish God from this our universe.” That part is played 
rather by men who hover about the battle-fields of Science some- 
what like Hotspur’s fop on the plain of Holmedon, and who earn 
reputation by utilising the brains of others. 
The author of the work before us is evidently a man of Science, 
and no less evidently a Theist and a Christian, and he comes 
forward with the laudable objeCt of harmonising, if possible, the 
“ conflicting ideas which are floating in the minds of the younger 
generation,” or at least showing distinctly what are the points at 
issue. To this grave task he brings an evident love for truth, and 
an amount of learning which it would be idle to disparage. He 
accepts, provisionally at least, Evolution, but like ourselves* he 
regards it as God’s way of creation, and as by no means irrecon- 
cilable with the existence of design in the Universe. 
The work opens with an Introduction, in which the results of 
modern research are clearly summarised. He notices, without 
criticising, the strange theory of Prof. Helmholtz and Sir W. 
Thomson, that the first germs of life may have been brought to 
* May we not say like Darwin and Lamarck ? 
