by righteousness. To the Hebrew there could have been no time without eternity, no man without God; our lives were but the moments which marked His way as He moved from eternity to eternity, from intention to fulfilment.

This faith was the faith of simple men, but the simplicity of the men only helps the more to illustrate the sublimity of the faith. The wonderful thing is, that a belief so large, so rational, so mighty in itself and in its results should have entered into the life of man through men so simple. To describe its action, to recount its history-what it has achieved for man, for civilization, and for religion-would be to tell a tale more marvellous than the most fairy tale of science. But how it has lived, what it has done and caused to be done cannot here be told; our concern is with another and graver question, whether it has any right to continued life, whether any claim on the intellect and faith of our day. That is a question that touches the very bases of our lives, goes down to the roots of all our fair humanities. The need for discussing it is not, indeed, peculiar to our own age. No age has been without its doubts, and faith has never been able to live without a sufficient reason. There are periods when new knowledge seems to make the old reasons for faith invalid, and the time looks critical till the invincible reason, changing its form, stands up in renewed strength. We can better measure the growth of our knowledge than the degree and energy of our ignorance, and doubt derives its force not from what we do know, but from what we do not, What faith has to fear is not the new knowledge, but the new ignorance which the knowledge brings. The more

CAN THEY BE RECONCILED?

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the certainties of science widen, the vaster become the mysteries of being; but every achievement of the scientific intellect leaves the scientific imagination lest patient with ignorance, more confident that it can by hypothesis and inference penetrate every secret that lies in the universe within and without. The splendour of a new discovery dazzles the imagination, inspires it with the idea that what has solved one long insoluble problem is capable of solving all, that the light which has suddenly streamed through one dark mystery has but to be turned on the face of nature and into the heart of man to illumine and interpret both. So the progress of science has made the imagination of scientists vivid, and they have indulged in dreams that no ancient theologian or metaphysician in his maddest mood could have surpassed, or even equalled. But there are signs that a saner mood is at hand. Scientific speculation, while wisely audacious in its own province, is with equal wisdom becoming more modest and sober beyond it. It is becoming more conscious of the mystery of being, of the immensity and intricacy of its ultimate problem. Men feel the further from a real the nearer they get to a pan-physical solution; the attempt to state it but shows its utter inadequacy or irrelevance. And so even in presence of the august association that for the moment possesses this city it can seem no impertinent thing to discuss this question, whether science has either superseded or contradicted the ancient belief in the eternal God who made the worlds; in other words, whether, in the face of the doctrines and discoveries of Modern Science, Theism has any claim to live.

1. I will not begin by protesting my love of science.

The theologian, as distinguished from the mere traditional dogmatist, is a man of science, and the sciences form a sisterhood that may know emulation but ought never to know either jealousy or dislike. The distinguished President of the British Association told us the other night the wonderful story of the progress science had made during the past fifty years. But two things he omitted: he omitted to tell us how much theology had contributed to this progress, and how much progress theology itself had made. He said: "To science we owe the idea of progress." He is mistaken, unless theology was the science he meant. The idea of progress in nature, in man, and in history, was the direct creation of theology. That is a fact in the history of thought open to no manner of doubt. Theology, too, was the first to formulate a theory of development, to attempt to interpret nature and man as a growth, though a growth that expressed the unfolding of a purpose, the action of a living will. She was the mother of all our modern sciences, made the minds that created alike the method and the passion for the interpretation of nature. What created these created all they have achieved. Analyse what we may term the mental dynamic forces in science, and you will find them to be creatures of religion, generated as it were out of her very bosom. Zeal for truth is the child of zeal for God; the modern enthusiasm for knowledge was begotten by the spirit of worship, the spirit that laboured to read and know the Mind of the Maker through the things He had made. The man who studies with deepest reverence studies with most success. Reverence can be only where love of truth is, and no man who loves truth hates God.

THEOLOGY ITSELF A SCIENCE.

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But theology has not only contributed to science the idea of progress and the mental habits and energies that have worked it, she has also proved the reality and vigour of her life by the progress she has made. Within the past fifty years she has enlarged her province and her methods. Theology has her comparative sciences; to her ancient domain there has now been added that field of wonders termed the Science of Religion. No religion is indifferent to her; she seeks to know all, the place each holds in history, its meaning, the work it has done, the way and degree in which it has contributed to the progress, the civilization and the happiness of man. Then she has become more historical, knows better how to handle her sacred books, how to get at the essence and truths of religion; how to interpret, on the one hand, the religious contents of the spirit of man, and on the other, religion to man's spirit. Then, too, theology has enlarged all her conceptions; her idea of God is nobler, her idea of man is worthier, her outlook is immenser, her spirit is sweeter and saner, her notion of the creative method, the Divine order and way of government, of the relations of God, man and the universe has grown at once richer and more comprehensive. Of, course, these are very general things to say, and only true of theology, not of all who study or teach it. We speak of the science, not of the multitudes who follow it. All multitudes are of the mixed order. Even the army that marches under the banner of the associated sciences is not all vanguard. Behind it is the vast main body, always critical, often jealous and even distrustful of its brilliant leaders, while in the rear loiters a host of stragglers whose voices now and

then reach us as if over a space of fifty years. Progress is never equal, least of all in knowledge; but we measure it from the footprints of the foremost, not from the trail of the last laggard wayfarer.

He has been robed

But while we thus maintain that theology is a science that has well and variously served her sister sciences, we no less cordially confess that these have splendidly enriched and enlarged her province. The sciences that are perfecting our idea of the universe have exalted our idea of God. in other and grander attributes since they extended the horizon of human thought into a boundless and peopled immensity, into a busy and immeasurable past. Our notion of the creative process has become truer and sublimer since geology carried us back into its vast successive periods, and showed us the slow and progressive method of the Creator, who fashions worlds as it were by nature, without the aid of miracle, and advances by imperceptible gradations from the meanest beginnings towards the noblest ends. Our conception of the creative action has become clearer and more real since we believed in the conservation of energy, the correlation and conversion of the physical forces, and so were enabled to conceive the causal energy in nature as a unity, indestructible, incapable of increase or decrease, everywhere active, ever changing its form, yet never beginning as never ceasing to be. Then, too, the ideas of order and law in nature have made us more conscious of the unities that govern the Divine action, that bind into harmony the will and method and end of God. A creation without order means that there is no ordering creator. But since science has revealed law everywhere, moulding the