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quoted in these lectures. A geologist writing in an American periodical says, "We can assure him that there are very many among them (geologists), both in Europe and this country, who do not merely give their assent to the truth of revelation, but whose whole hope rests upon it; whose attachment to it is stronger than death, and who count it their chief glory and happiness to defend and enforce its glorious truths: men who rejoice to see in every rock formation the marks of a creating and upholding God."

Charles Daubeny, president of the British Association at Cheltenham in August 1856, has well expressed this sentiment. I cannot refrain from quoting part of his address: "At any rate I trust the time has now passed away when such studies as those we recommend lie under the imputation of fostering sentiments inimical to religion. In countries and in an age in which men of letters were generally tinctured with infidelity, it is not to be supposed that natural philosophers would altogether escape the contagion, but the contemplation of the works of creation is surely in itself far more calculated to induce the humility that paves the way to belief, than the presumption which disdains to lean upon the supernatural. We are told that in a future and higher state of existence the chief occupation of the blessed is that of praising and worshipping the Almighty. But is not the contemplation of the works of the Creator, and the study of the ordinances of the great Lawgiver of the universe, in itself an act of praise and adoration? And if so, may not one at least of the 1 American Journal of Science, viii. 155 (cf. Ev. K. Z. 1827, p. 108).

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sources of happiness which we are promised in a future state of existence, one of the rewards for a single-minded and reverential pursuit after truth in our present state of trial, consist in a development of our faculties, and in the power of comprehending those laws and provisions of nature with which our finite reason does not enable us at present to become cognizant. Such are a few of the reflections which the study of physical science, cultivated in a right spirit, naturally suggests, and I ask you whether they are not more calculated to inspire humility than to induce conceit? to render us more deeply conscious how much of the vast field of knowledge must ever be concealed from our view, and how small a portion of the veil of Isis it is given to us to lift up, and therefore to dispose us to accept with a more unhesitating faith the knowledge vouchsafed from on high on subjects which our own unassisted reason is incapable of fathoming? Let us not therefore,' to use the language of a living prelate, 'think scorn of the pleasant land.' Every part of it may be cultivated with advantage, as the Land of Canaan when bestowed upon God's peculiar people. They were not commanded to let it lie waste, as incurably polluted by the abominations of its first inhabitants, but to cultivate it and dwell in it, living in obedience to the divine laws, and dedicating its choicest fruits to the Lord their God." I do not wish to lay more stress on the fact that many great savants are believing Christians than it deserves. But after all, Claudius is not quite wrong when he says in his simple-hearted

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1 Athenæum, 1856, p. 999.

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way: "I do not deny that I take great delight in these men; not so much because of religion, for that, of course, can neither gain nor lose anything from savants, be they great or small. But it is pleasant to see, for example, some of the most industrious and indefatigable savants, who have grown grey in the service of science, and have experienced and learnt more about her than has fallen to the lot of most, to see such men, not priding themselves on their knowledge, but after they have penetrated more deeply than others into the secrets of nature, waiting, as is fitting, with bared heads, and eager to learn, before the altar, and the deeper secrets of God. It is pleasant, and one turns with fresh courage to learning, which, while giving greater knowledge to its disciples, lets them remain reasonable people, and does not make them fools and scoffers. And it has a remarkable effect when we see, on the other hand, the light troops marching by with their hats on, turning up their conceited noses.' No doubt many of the savants who have taken up a position antagonistic to religion do not by any means belong to what Claudius calls the "light troops." Many of them are men who are famous in their profession. But here, as everywhere, the second-rate people and amateurs make most noise.

This at least follows from what has been said. Just as it is wrong to say that theology and science are opposed to each other, it is also wrong to say that theologians and men of science are opposed to each other, as if all the savants were on one side and all

1 Claudius, Werke, vi. 122.

theologians on the other. The names which I have mentioned show that many men of science are on the side of theology, and as you know, there are writers calling themselves theologians who are more resolute and vehement in their attacks on the Bible than ever men of science have been.

It is only fair to admit that if many men of science have been wrong in attacking divine revelation on the authority of their science, some theologians have also committed the fault of unjustly attacking and casting suspicion on natural science on the authority of the Biblical revelation. We need not notice former errors of this kind, for they may be excused by the indefiniteness of the boundary between science and religion which I have described. But it is inconceivable that in our day theologians should treat natural science as an enemy to revelation. We can assert with some satisfaction that among Catholic theologians this is seldom the case. In Germany it is very rare; but English writers who seek to prove the harmony of the Bible and science think it necessary to attack not only those men of science who are assailants of the Bible, but also the "anti-geologists' among the theologians, and in answer to the latter they lay stress on the fact, that not all the interpretations of passages in the Bible brought forward by theologians, and not all the scientific theories propounded by them on the authority of the Bible, can claim to be regarded by men of science as unassailable facts. Hugh Miller and John Pye Smith, two of the most zealous defenders of the harmony between the Bible and nature, the former a man of science, the

latter a theologian, enter into long discussions with a series of theological writers who would make the Bible, as explained by them, the arbitrator in purelv scientific questions, who further maintain that all the geological statements which contradict their own exegetical views are irreligious, and occasionally declare geology itself to be "an invention of the enemy of God and man."1

It is only necessary to mention these things. Reasonable theologians will not dispute the justice of the following observations of Whewell's: "In the first place, the meaning which any generation puts upon the phrases of Scripture depends more than is at first sight supposed upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence, while men imagine they are contending for revelation, they are in fact contending for their own interpretation of revelation, unconsciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally probable. And the new interpretation which the new philosophy requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the dangerous results that were apprehended. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar to man, it is found that the ideas which it calls up are quite as reconcilable as the former ones were with the soundest religious views."3

1 Hugh Miller, Test. of the Rocks, p. 342; J. P. Smith, The Relation, etc., pp. 8, 26, 155; Brownson's Quarterly Review, 1863, p. 23.

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2 History of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed., London 1847, 1.403. Pianciani, Erläuterungen zur Mosaischen Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 8. He says of the interpretation of the six days in Gen. i.: "We cannot reject an entirely new explanation of some Mosaic passages and words in our text. There is no question here of doctrines of faith or morality, but only