of a barbarian brain 1; the Gnostic and the Manichean thought themselves exalted far above the orthodox theology when, instead of the teaching of Christ, they proclaimed as the Higher Wisdom a medley of Greek and Oriental speculations, glossed over with Christian ideas. To-day we repeat of those discoveries the contemptuous words of St. Jerome touching the Greek philosophers of his time: "At most a few old bookworms, who would otherwise be unoccupied, still concern themselves about it in the seclusion of their libraries. But with our rustic and uncultured fishermen the whole world resounds." 2 As far as material culture goes, the Arabs of the early Middle Ages could boast themselves superior to the Christian nations, as later the Anabaptists and the Mormons surpassed the rest of Christianity in industrial pursuits. The comparison becomes still clearer, if we look back to the remotest ages. In the Old Testament as often as Israel came in contact with the dazzling culture of Egypt, Assyria or Greece, multitudes of the chosen people yielded, as if bewitched, to the intoxicating appeal to the senses. They felt in comparison with it rude and primitive, grew ashamed of the religion of their fathers, flung themselves into the arms of attractive idolatries, and laboured as in the time of the Maccabbees to obliterate the last trace of adherence to the old faith. But who to-day doubts that the many, who so acted, bartered their treasure and their heritage for mere tinsel, in a blindness all but inconceivable, and that as a world-philosophy the religious system of

1 A ẞápẞapov tóλunua. Porphyrius in Euseb., H. E. 6, 19. 2 Vix in angulo otioso eos senes recolunt. Rusticanos vero et piscatores nostros totus orbis loquitur, universus mundus sonat (S. Hieron., In Gal. 1. 3 init.).

Israel was far loftier than the nature-worship of Greece and the Orient?

A thousand times in the course of history material culture has advanced the claim to formulate also the general philosophy of life. But on every occasion this claim has been withstood by countless believers, and for the most part in the process of history its pretences have been punished. Humanity has continued to seek the sources of the higher life less in the palaces than in the catacombs of Rome, less in the philosophical schools of Athens and Alexandria than in the solitudes of the Thebaid.

If then there is in fact hostility between Christianity and the Science of to-day, that is to say, Natural Science, why must it be assumed that the truth lies on the side of Science? It is idle to say that things do not stand as in previous conflicts of this kind, that in former times what passed for the criticism of Christianity was mere metaphysical speculation, soon dissipated, but that the Science of to-day relies on facts which can certainly never be refuted. It is not the facts that are hostile to Christianity, but the philosophy which it is sought to ground on them; and this is as unstable a structure as any philosophy of the past.

But we must not delay here over any further consideration of these points. As against the apostles of Materialism, mentioned above, we desire to develop the thought suggested by Lord Rayleigh in his reference to Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell. We call in question not the inference from the alleged enmity between science and religion, but the fact of this enmity itself. From the writers who represent themselves as the champions of science we wish to turn to those who are

recognized as such in the largest sense of the word, those to whom the advance of science is due, the veritable pioneers. These, before all, we desire to question concerning this conflict between scientific research and religious belief. If it exists, it will naturally be found most patent to minds of the first order. And if on the other hand we find among the great investigators, the very pioneers of science, many firm and fervent believers, and many others who admit the fundamental truths on which Christianity is founded, we shall not set a very high value on this pretended antagonism between knowledge and belief.

Our standpoint has, we hope, been now made clear. Our object is not to set forth an argument for Christianity, but to point out the emptiness of a familiar objection urged against it. We seek, not to collect the testimony given in favour of Christian belief by great scientists, but to repel the hostile inference drawn from the alleged unanimity of Science in its disfavour. Nor do we aim at exhibiting the question in every light, but only in one, limiting ourselves, namely to the contention that such unanimous opposition simply does not exist.

We confine our survey to the savants of the 19th Century. For nobody thinks of calling in question the Christian faith of the earlier scientists, of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Boyle, Mariotte, Haller and Linnaeus. Living contemporaries ought not, perhaps, to be dealt with in this connection, but we satisfy our scruples by referring only to discourses pronounced publicly by them in the ear of the whole world.

I. A FUNDAMENTAL LAW:

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.

The greatest conquest of the 19th Century in Physics, its richest gain on the theoretical side, is beyond question the mechanical theory of heat, and what is intimately bound up with this theory, the Law of the Conservation of Energy. The formulation of this theory was not only a great advance in our knowledge of a single natural force, but a light on the constitution. of matter in general, full of significance for every branch of exact science.

It had long been known that beneath the changes, incessant and manifold of the material world, organic as well as inorganic, beneath the perpetual formations and disintegrations, the underlying matter merely moves hither and thither and never diminishes or increases in the minutest degree. It was now proved that a similar law holds good of the force operative in matter. The kindling of a fire produces heat and light. But that which issues in the form of light and heat from the burning material was already present in it, as the energy of the discharged arrow was present in the bent bow. If we burn coal to set a steam-engine in motion, we may say similarly that we produce motion. But this production is not a creation out of nothing, but a transformation. As much mechanical work can be done as there is power to do work in the burning material, and

no more. This law applies to all changes, physical or chemical. If the work of the steam-engine be translated into electricity, this again into light or heat, and the light or heat into any form of "Motive-power" or "Energy", all these are simply transformations; an increase or diminution of the existent sum of energy is as impossible as an increase or diminution of the originally created sum of matter.

Haeckel1 combines the two laws, the Conservation of Matter and the Conservation of Energy, under the single "Law of Substance", and not only calls this "the supreme and basal law of the Cosmos" in which are synthesized "all the most important results" and intellectual conquests of modern science, but sets it down further as "Paragraph I of the Monist Religion of the future". He expresses himself full of contempt that the great physicist Von Helmholtz was buried at Berlin "amidst the tolling of church-bells" and in the presence of the highest people of the land. "Did none of these 'first people in the land', then, suspect that these honours were being heaped on a 'Freethinker', who to their eyes must appear as an iconoclast, an obstinate 'heretic' of the first order? Did none of them know that Helmholtz's greatest achievement, the Law of Substance, is Paragraph I of the Monist Religion?"

Now we are very far indeed from taking such rhetoric seriously. For what does Haeckel really mean to say? Does he assert that the Law of the Conservation of Energy is in contradiction with some Christian dogma? This would be a completely unintelligible assertion, for

1 Die Zukunft III, Berlin 1895, 199.