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mean between Christianity and unbelief : between these there 
can be no peace while the world lasts, but between science 
itself and religion, as there certainly ought to be, — it must be 
established, as it appears to me, on a somewhat broader basis 
than has been as yet assumed. Attempts to reconcile them 
at particular points only are always of doubtful advantage. 
We may seem to have gained much when we prove, for 
example, that the history of creation in Holy Scripture har- 
monizes with the conclusions of geology or of dynamical 
science ; or when it is maintained by scientific men that the 
physical universe is constructed of atoms which have the cha- 
racter of “ manufactured articles ” ; or when a new discovery 
throws doubt on some theory that seems to us to exclude the 
Creator from His own world. But there is no small risk in 
this mode of dealing with the question, of doing some injury 
alike to science and religion, and especially of producing a 
feeble hybrid, which is neither genuine science nor true reli- 
gion. And this method of seeking a reconciliation between 
the two seems to assume that the conclusions of science have 
a certainty such as the principles of Christianity do not possess, 
which is exactly the opposite of the truth. For not only is it 
manifest that many of the particular hypotheses of science are 
more or less guesses in the dark, which more knowledge may 
largely modify, but also generally scepticism, which is fatal to 
religion, is the very life of science. And if some of those 
scientific conclusions, which seem to confirm religion and to 
effect the reconciliation desired, are found in the progress of 
human knowledge to be not altogether trustworthy, religion 
itself may receive no small detriment. At all events, our faith 
is in danger of becoming a poor faint-hearted thing, always 
suspicious of science, and afraid lest some new discovery should 
knock away the uncertain supports on which it had too much 
relied in its conflict with infidelity. 
5. Indeed, very little reflection might convince us that in 
order to avoid these dangers we need a general solution, and 
not any number of particular solutions of the problem. How- 
ever, it is clearly not sufficient to say generally that science 
and religion have different spheres, that each is paramount 
in its own, and that the one need not interfere with the 
other. This the unbeliever readily admits, and complacently 
bids religion confine itself to the sentiments , and elevate them, 
leaving to science the sphere of logical reasoning, for which he 
claims absolute authority over the mind. But sentiment, wo 
well know, means anything or nothing, except it be rational 
and have a basis of reality; and certainly Christianity claims to 
be, in the highest conceivable sense, reasonable, the very 
manifestation in human life of Divine Reason. 
