forgetful of the real benefit which theology derives from writers of this class.

I have already shown that the habits of thought produced by physical science render the argument from miracles distasteful to the philosopher. On the other hand, physical science has rendered to the argument from miracles a real service. If it have made men more unwilling to admit the fact of the miracle, it has largely added to the significance of the fact. In truth, it is to physical science that the fact owes its significance. Whence but from physical science do we learn that the recorded act was beyond the power of man? History may tell us that Jesus Christ cured diseases by a simple exertion of His will. But why do we say that this act is a proof of superhuman power? Because physical science teaches us, with a probability which is every day increasing, that man's will, without the intervention of man's body, is powerless upon external nature. And for this reason, a miracle performed eighteen hundred years ago is far more significant now than it was then. It is, of course, a wonderful thing that an individual should display powers utterly transcending the science of his own time. But it is far more wonderful that those powers should still transcend the science of our time, notwithstanding all the advance which that science has made in eighteen hundred years. Certainly we can use an argument which was not open to the Apostles. If this phenomenon had been due to mere human power, it is probable that we should ere now have discovered the means of producing it.

Science, while advancing with marvellous rapidity, does yet in certain directions indicate the limits of her own power. There are certain negative conclusions which, if they cannot be strictly demonstrated, are made every day more probable. Thus, for example, it is now accepted as almost certain, that it is essentially beyond human power to bring into existence a single particle of matter. If this conclusion make men more unwilling to admit the fact of the miracle of the loaves, it adds largely to its significance as an evidence of superhuman power.

There is a pressing question which well deserves all the thought we can give it What is the greatest danger to be apprehended from the present mutual relations of science and theology? I believe it to be mutual isolation. Where evidence falls short of demonstration, there is no safeguard of truth more powerful than diversity of thought. It is by our opponents rather than by our friends that we are saved from extravagance. It is conflict of opinion which secures that every argument bearing on the question shall be fully discussed. But, in order

that this beneficial result should be attained, it is necessary that each party should have some power over the other; or, if not, that there should be an intermediate party who will listen to both. And if thinkers be divided into two isolated bodies, neither of whom will listen to the reasoning of the other, the cause of truth will gain nothing from their contests. Nay, it will suffer; for if neither party will listen to the reasoning of the other, their contests can be nothing but mutual invective; the necessary effect of which is to close the mind of each party against the portion of truth possessed by the other.

I think we may see, in the mutual attitude of philosophers and theologians, symptoms of this danger. "I will not listen to your science," says the one, not unfrequently, " where it contradicts my book." "I reject your book," retorts the other, "because it is inconsistent with my science." Both parties claim for their own kind of evidence that it shall be considered decisive; and naturally enough, each refuses to listen to that adduced by the other, unless its own witness be silent; and the result is, either complete isolation, or-worse still-instead of a philosophic contest, in which both parties would have served the cause of truth, we have a mere wrangle-denunciation on the one side-scorn on the other-certain injury to truth on both sides. It would be hard to apportion the blame. There was a time when theology was much the worst offender. I should hesitate to say that it is so now. Indeed, the progress of physical discovery has been so brilliant and so rapid, that any attempt to silence its voice would be simply ridiculous; and it is long since any eminent theological school has been so intolerant of the reasoning of the philosopher as the Positivist school now is of the reasoning of the theologian. But this question is comparatively unimportant.

own.

That which concerns us all to remember is, that truth is not served by the intolerance which would close all paths to knowledge but its That intolerance has existed in every age. It exists still. The man of science who tells us that we observation and experiment is guilty of it. us that we must be guided solely by the Church, or even the Bible, is not less guilty.

must be guided solely by The theologian who tells

Doubtless, each investigator does well in mainly confining his own. labours to the path which he himself has chosen. But he does not well if he forget that there are other paths beside his. He may think, perhaps, that in the attempt to close them he is promoting the cause of truth. So did the oppressors of infant Christianity think that in murdering its apostles, they were doing God service. We have

learned that that was no true service. So, too, may a future generation look back on those who are trying to shut any path to knowledge, and say that whatever applause they may have won from their school, or party, or sect, they were false in their allegiance to truth.

My clerical brethren, let me say a word to you before I leave this great subject.

If in treating of it, I were addressing a more purely scientific audience, I should conclude with a few words to them on their duty to you. I hope you will listen to me if, in the same spirit, I now conclude with a few words to you on your duty to them.

I ask you to place yourselves in the position of those-and there are many such-who, in their pursuits and habits of thought, may be said to belong to two worlds-the world of Science and the world of Theology.

I ask you to sympathise in the pain-real, bitter pain-which they feel, when they are called upon in the name of one allegiance to forswear the other-when they are called upon in the name of religion to shut their eyes to the discoveries of science, or in the name of science to abandon their faith in the Gospel of Christ.

I ask you to believe that there are in that world of Science, even among those from whom you most differ, even among those whom you regard as fatally astray, men who entered on the career of inquiry with a devotion to truth as pure as ever yours was.

I ask you to believe-and whether you believe it or not, it is as true as that God is in Heaven-that in the world of Science there are men who would welcome that as the brightest dawn of their lives, which should scatter the perplexities that cloud their horizon now-in whose light they should be able to read, that the writing of God in the book of Revelation holds the same language as the writing, not less His, in the book of Nature.

And I ask you, in the name of that highest charity, which is not less the highest justice, to abstain from those wholesale, bitter, senseless denunciations of "the puny arrogance of human science," "the petty conceit of human philosophy," which are to be heard in so many a pulpit, on so many a platform.

I ask it of you, as you would not drive from the Gospel of Christ men who seek no higher blessing than to be convinced of its entire truth; I ask it of you as you would draw from the march of Science— a march which you cannot arrest-all the benefit which it may well give you; I ask it of you, as you would hasten the advent of that day for which we pray as fervently as you do; and distant as it may now seem, that day will come, when men shall learn that Science and

Revelation lead to the same haven; when those mighty streams, which now seem to flow in parted channels, shall pour their united waters into the one great ocean of Truth.

The Rev. CHARLES PRITCHARD, F.R.S. (President of the Royal Astronomical Society), then read the following paper :-The mere raising of such questions as those upon which my learned predecessor has with so much ability and eloquence addressed you, is of itself an indication of the uneasiness which prevailin the relations of science to theology. The fact also, that this is the fourth occasion on which kindred subjects have been discussed at meetings similar to the present, is an additional evidence of the interest, and, as it might be said, of the anxiety in which such questions are involved.

Now, it can hardly be doubted, that the final object at which such discussions aim, the hope which must have animated the minds of those who have proposed them, is to render these relations between science and theology easier and more harmonious, by coming if possible to a clearer understanding of the points really at issue. I say this must in fact be our one object and our hope, because reasonable men have never supposed, that between what is traced out by the finger of God in the scheme of the universe, and what is truly revealed by the Word of God in the scheme of Christianity, when both schemes are properly interpreted, any real and essential antagonism can possibly exist. So said Kepler 150 years ago; nevertheless, from the time of Kepler, through those of Newton and Boyle, down to the days of our own Herschel, wars and rumours of wars have never ceased between some of the advocates of the unfettered progress of natural knowledge, and some of those to whom have been confided the keys of a more sacred learning. You will observe that I have limited the expression to some. I have done so purposely, because happily and all along, there have been, on both sides, men of a wiser, and calmer, and nobler spirit, who have not permitted either their unreasonable fears, or the noise and the discord of human passion, to drown the low but articulate strains of harmony, which, equally in the ears of faith and of knowledge, ceaselessly proceed from the voice of Nature to her God.

You will be prepared then, by these preliminary remarks, for the expression of my conviction, that whatever may be the scepticism or the difficulties, at present existing in the minds of some scientific men,

in regard to Christianity, or even to natural religion, we are to look for the causes thereof, neither in any recent enlargement of their knowledge of the laws of nature, nor in those habits of mind which are essential to the successful cultivation of such knowledge. For it ought not to be forgotten that many great natural philosophers have existed before the present day, and great natural philsophers are still living as lights among ourselves, who have preserved unshaken and inviolate their loyalty to the Great Author of All, as one who has assured to them His power and His Godhead in the things that are seen, and has revealed to them His grace in His written word.

I have ventured to say, and I repeat it with a sincere conviction, that there is nothing in the frame of mind essential to the successful cultivation of any branch of natural knowledge, which necessarily entails any particular predisposition to religious doubt. The late Professor Whewell-a name never to be mentioned without respectthought otherwise. He distinguished between two habits of mind, the deductive and the inductive habit. In less technical language, he thought that those students whose minds were occupied in deducing a long and practically interminable train of consequences, from one or more of the ascertained laws of nature, or from some of the known absolute truths of geometry, mathematicians, for instance, or physicomathematical astronomers, were more liable than other students to religious scepticism. He thought that mental absorption in such pursuits, engendered a tendency to become so enamoured with the beauty and fertility of the natural law, or with those of the exquisite and refined analysis employed in its discussion, that they were predisposed to overlook that Supreme and Divine Intelligence, of whose will, the natural law was, after all, only the embodiment and the expression. It is not unlikely, that the peculiar example of Laplace, and of one or two other mathematical philosophers who flourished in the earlier part of Mr. Whewell's life, suggested a conclusion which I feel convinced a subsequent and wider experience has shown to be far from tenable. On the other hand, this same eminent writer concluded, that those students of nature who busied themselves first of all in the systematic investigation of facts heretofore unknown and unobserved, and then set themselves to group these new facts together, so as to expose and decipher fresh portions of the plan on which natural things are constructed-such men he thought, from their constant observation of new and surprising inter-adaptations of things created, would have a natural predisposition everywhere to recognise the mind of the Creator who had thus pre-adapted them.