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 [^
 
 MODEEN SCIENCE 
 
 AND 
 
 NATURAL EELIGION: 
 
 READ BEFORE THE CHURCH CONGRESS AT BRIGHTON, 
 
 AND NOW SUBMITTED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 
 
 BRITISH ASSOCIATION WHO LISTENED TO THE 
 
 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AT BELFAST : 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EEV. C. PEITCHARD, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S. 
 
 Savilian Frofensor of Astronomy in the Univeraiti/ of Oxford ; 
 
 Vice- Presidp.nt of the Eoi/al Astronomical Societi/, late Hulsean Lecturer, 
 
 and formerly Fellow of St, John's College, Camhridye, 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION, 
 
 L N D I\' : 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGJ 
 
 SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : 
 77, GEEAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS J 
 ' 4, EOTAL EXCHANGE; 48, PICCADILLY; 
 
 AND BY ALL BOOESELLEES. 
 
 L^
 
 Elcgautissima liiBcco solis, ijlauctarum et comeLarum 
 compagos iion nisi cousilio et dominio eutis intelligeutis 
 et potentis oriri potuit. . . . Hie omnia regit, non ut 
 aninia mundi sed ut universornm dominus. . . . Coli- 
 nius enim ut servi, et Deus sine dominio, providentia, et 
 causis finalibus nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura. • . 
 Dicitur autem deus per allegoriam videre, audiro . . 
 fabricare, condere, construere. Nam serino omnis de floo 
 a rebus liumanis per similitudinem aliquam desumitur, non 
 2^erfectam quidem, sed aliquavii tamen. — Newton, "Principia : 
 Scholium Geuerale." 
 
 Qehs eS(aK€U auTl SeAroy rhv k6(Tixov. — Chrysostom. 
 
 La Nature est une Image de la Gr^ce. — Pascal.
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 The teM&i* of tile following" pag-es is requested 
 to bear in mind that this Essay was originally 
 constructed so as not greatly to exceed the very 
 limited time allowed for reading it before the 
 Church Congress. Consequently the whole 
 argument has been purposely condensed,, and in 
 many instances is little more than a series of 
 suggestive hints. The more important part of 
 the argument seems to the writer to be simply 
 this : Modern Science in its latest and grandest 
 developments leads to the inevitable conclusion 
 that the Universe as we see it^ is a Creation by an 
 Intelligent Will ? I do not myself see how it is 
 logically possible to evade this conclusion^ 
 A 2
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 drawn from the scientific premises alone. The 
 next step in the argument would^ in the grave 
 words of Bishop Butler^ be this : " An Author 
 of Nature being supposed,, it is not so much a 
 deduction of reason^ as a matter of experience 
 that we are under His government : under His 
 government in the same sense as we are under 
 the government of civil magistrates. Because 
 the annexing pleasure to some actions^ and pain 
 to others, in our power to do or forbear, and 
 giving notice of this appointment beforehand 
 to those whom it concerns, is the proper formal 
 notion of government. ^^ Then follow the con- 
 siderations which show that in this govern- 
 ment, there is ^^ something which makes for 
 righteousness : " that is to say, this govern- 
 ment is Moral. After this may fairly come the 
 Historical Argument. Then the consideration 
 of the wonderful character of Christ. And 
 finally will come the composite character of 
 the Human Being, briefly touched on in page 
 16 of this Essay, and how far this composite 
 character is correlative to the hopes of the 

 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Gospel and to the teachings of the marvellous 
 Central Figure moving and living therein. 
 And here I would venture with all diffidence, 
 but with all the strength of a personal con- 
 viction, to quote another passage of the gravest 
 character from the writings of our great philo- 
 sophical divine, a passage which seems sin- 
 gularly applicable to these days of arrogance 
 and panic, and which ought to arrest the 
 groundless presumption of the one, and allay 
 the equally groundless and vague apprehensions 
 of the other : ^' There is,'''' he says, *^ in the 
 present age, a certain fearlessness, with regard 
 to what may be hereafter under the govern- 
 ment of God, which nothing but a universally 
 acknowledged demonstration on the side of 
 atheism can justify ; and which makes it quite 
 necessary that men be reminded that there is 
 no sort of ground for being thus presumptuous, 
 even upon the most sceptical principles.^''
 
 The Christian Evidence Committee of theS.P.C.K, 
 while giving its general approval to the works 
 of the Christian Evidence Series, does not hold itself 
 responsible for every statement or every line of 
 argument. 
 
 The responsibility of each writer extends to his 
 own work only. aoii/arm' x^af>wJ
 
 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 A^B 
 
 NATFEAL EELIGION. 
 
 I THINK that tlie time has come when the 
 relations between science and religion are well 
 understood^ and may be clearly stated. In the 
 present attempt to do so_, the trammels of the 
 twenty minutes enforce a brevity which must 
 be fatal to completeness^ and possibly fatal also 
 to precision. Nevertheless^, I have done what I 
 could under the assurance that_, whether I fail 
 or otherwise^ neither the interests of science nor 
 those of religion can be seriously imperilled at 
 the hands of any single writer. 
 
 According, then_, to the latest and most 
 authoritative statement of the new philosophy, 
 it is asserted with considerable confidence :
 
 8 JIOrERN SCIEXCE 
 
 1. That the potential of all things terrestrial, 
 including man with all his powers, intellectual 
 and moral, the potential of our very selves, for 
 instance, in this assembly, was originally con- 
 tained in the atoms of one of those nebulous 
 patches of light, thousands of which are brought 
 within the ken of the modern telescope. How 
 this potential got there is not stated. '"^ 
 
 2. That the present state of things has been 
 brought about, not by the subsequent inter- 
 vention of any supreme cause or governor of all 
 things, but through the natural interaction of 
 these atoms or atomic forces. Combinations 
 and recombinations throughout unnumbered 
 ages have ensued, and the fittest have sur- 
 vived. Of living organisms the powers have 
 descended by inheritance, have then been 
 modified by their environments, and again the 
 fittest have survived. This, succintly, is said 
 to be the origin of man by evolution. ;f^fr->fBjr» 
 
 3. It is asserted that throughout Nature there 
 are no certain tokens of design ; wonderful 
 adaptations are by no means denied, but they 
 are referred to the influence of successive en- 
 vironments and Natural Selection. .^U\a
 
 AND NATURAL RELIGION. 
 
 4. This pliilosophy asserts that if there be an 
 intelligent Author of Nature,, an Absolute 
 Supreme, He is to us unknowable. 
 
 Suchj so far as I understand it, are said to be 
 the legitimate philosophical conclusions of the 
 most complete and refined science of the day. 
 
 If this be the ultimate result of the latest 
 combinations of the atoms, and if this be all, 
 then, so far as man is concerned, this ultimate 
 result is, human life without an adequate motive, 
 affections with no object sufficient to fill them, 
 hopes of immortality never to be realized, aspira- 
 tions after God and godliness never to be 
 ■ attained: thus myriads of myriads of other 
 nebulae may still be the potentials of delusion, 
 and their outcomes the kingdom of despair. 
 ff '»: t(Now, I am old-fashioned enough not to accept 
 any of these postulates of the new philosophy 
 i9i their entirety ; there seems to be just a 
 sufficient substratum of truth in each of them 
 to render them specious, and to some minds 
 attractive ; but in their entirety I; am unable 
 to accept them; not solely because I am a 
 Christian, but because I am a student of 
 nature. I know of no more illustrious names
 
 "10 MODEllN SCIENCE 
 
 in the annals of science than those of Newton, 
 Herschel, and Faraday (I make no mention, as I 
 could, of the names of the living), and their 
 faith in an intelligent Author and Governor 
 of all things is a matter of history. Mere 
 authority, I well know, neither has nor ought 
 to have any ultimate weight in the deductions 
 of science; nevertheless, the mention of these 
 great names seems the readiest mode of re- 
 assuring an assembly such as this — of re- 
 assuring them from the very first, after the 
 enunciation of postulates which could not fail to 
 shock the ears and sadden the hearts of Christian 
 men. 
 
 As to the evolution of man, not so much from 
 a zoophyte or a monkey, as rather through zoo- 
 phytes from the interaction of the atomic forces 
 in a nebula ; if such can be shown to be the 
 order of nature, that is to say, the will of Him 
 Who ordered nature, I bow, and have no objec- 
 tion to make. For '' an intelligent Author of 
 Nature being supposed, it makes no alteration 
 in the matter before us, whether He acts in 
 nature every moment, or at once contrived and 
 executed His own part in the plan of the world. '^
 
 AND NATTTEAL llELIGION. 11 
 
 These are the words of Bishop Butler^ and he 
 ffoes still further and adds in words of a burnino^ 
 significance, ^' If civil magistrates could make 
 the sanctions of their laws execute themselves, 
 we should be just in the same sense under 
 their government then as we are now; but 
 in a much higher degree and more perfect 
 manner." 
 
 If creation by evolution were a very strongly 
 presumable fact, I should logically accept it. 
 With my own hands a quarter of a century ago, 
 I obtained, and any chemist might have ob- 
 tained, all the elements which I found in an 
 egg and in grains of wheat, out of a piece of 
 granite and from the air which surrounded it, 
 element for element. It has been one of the 
 most astonishing and unexpected results of 
 modern science that we can unmistakeably trace 
 these very elements also in the stars, and partly 
 also in the nebulae ; perhaps all of them when 
 our instruments are improved. But no chemist, 
 with all his wonderful art, has ever yet wit- 
 nessed the evolution of a living thing from 
 these lifeless molecules of matter and force. 
 
 From what I know, through my own spe-
 
 12 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 ciality, both from geometry and experiment_, of 
 the structure of lenses and the human eye_, I 
 do not believe that any amount of evolution, 
 extending" through any amount of time consist- 
 ent with the requirements of our astronomical ^ 
 knowledge, could have issued in the production 
 of that most beautiful and complicated instru- 
 ment the human eye. There are too mtmy 
 curved surfaces, too many distances, too many 
 densities of the media, each essential to the 
 other, too great a facility of ruin by slight 
 disarrangement, to admit of anything short of 
 the intervention of an intelligent Will at some 
 
 stage of the evolutionary process." 
 .>,rj. 8fi d' 
 
 ' On this subject I trust I may be permitted to refer to 
 Note A, appended to my Hulsean Lectures for 1867 (Deigh- 
 ton, Bell, and Co.), where the question of the formation of 
 the human eye by evolution is considered at large. See 
 also note 11 iyifra. 
 
 2 It makes no difference to the force of this argument, 
 whether the intervention of the Will took place at the 
 creation of the atoms, or at a subsequent stage. The for- 
 mer hypothesis, viz. that of an original self-adaptive 
 power impressed ujDon the molecules (assemblages of 
 atoms) at the time of their creation, only enhances the 
 power and wisdom of the Creator. This is in the spirit 
 of Butler's obsei-vation already quoted relative to the exe- 
 cution of laws hy themselves. The " manufoctured articles " 
 of Sir John Herschel would, on this hypothesis, be more
 
 AND NATURAL EELIGION. 13 
 
 The most perfect_, and at the same time, the 
 most difficult optical contrivance known, is the 
 powerful achromatic object-glass of a micro- 
 scope : its structure is the long unhoped-for re- 
 sult of the ingenuity of many powerful minds ;. 
 yet in complexity and in perfection it falls infi- 
 nitely below the structure of the eye. Dis- 
 arrange any one of the curvatures of the many 
 surfaces or distances, or densities of the latter ; 
 or worse, disarrange its incomprehensible self- 
 adaptive power, the like of which is possessed 
 by the handiwork of nothing human, and all 
 the opticians in the world could not tell you 
 what is the correlative alteration necessary to 
 repair it, and still less to improve it as natural 
 selection is presumed to imply .^ 
 J 'But I do not rest my objections to the theory 
 
 highly manufactured still. They would in fact realize 
 Plato's ideal Kepublic, in which every element minds its 
 own business. 
 
 3 Dr. Helmholtz advances an argument on the other 
 side. I quote it only to show some results of the new 
 Philosophy. He says: "Now it is not too much to say 
 that if an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which 
 had all these defects [of the human eye], I should think 
 myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the 
 strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument." (!) 
 I can only express astonishment, entire dissent, and the 
 deepest regret at the language.
 
 14 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 of the universal prcvalcneo of crea-tioii by 
 natural selection without fiome intervention of 
 an external intelligent will, solely on any 
 special knowledge of the structure of the human 
 eye. Above and beyond all other similar argu- 
 ments^ and there are many such, Mr. "Wallace, 
 who has an equal claim with Mr. Darwin to 
 the origination of the theory of evolution, Mr. 
 "Wallace has made an express exception in the 
 case of man. For the creation of man, as he is, 
 he postulates the necessity of the intervention 
 of an external Will, and I commend his essay 
 to your special attention. Among other argu- 
 ments, he observes that the lowest types of 
 savages are in possession of a brain and of 
 capacities far beyond any use to which they 
 can apply them in their present condition, and 
 therefore they could not ^ have been evolved 
 
 4 My able University colleague, Professor Fowler, some- 
 vv'liat objects to tliis argument, because the power of an- 
 ticipation might have been originally impressed upon tho 
 molecules. This is conceivable, and, if really the case, 
 would be a still more wonderful instance of a more highly 
 wrought manufacture of the atoms. But the contention 
 of Mr. Darwin's Theory of Evolution seems to be, that tho 
 alteration or devcloimient of an organism is brought about 
 solely by the environment, and is up to tho extent only of 
 the demands of tlie environment itself and at the time :
 
 AND NATUllAL UELIGION. 15 
 
 from the mere necessities of their environments. 
 Prolepsis^ anticipation, I may add, involves 
 intention and a will. For my own part, I 
 would carry Mr. Wallace's remark upon savages 
 much further, and apply it to ourselves. We, 
 too, possess powers and capacities immeasurably 
 beyond the necessities of any merely transitory 
 life. There stir within us yearnings irrepres- 
 sible, longings unutterable, a curiosity unsatis- 
 fied and insatiable by ought we see. These 
 appetites, passions, and affections come to us, 
 not as Socrates and Plato ^ supposed, nor as our 
 own great Poet sings, from the dim recollection 
 
 in other words the Forces of Natural Selection are not 
 anticipative. In the beginning of Nature this theory sup- 
 poses no " pre-estahlished harmony y See Mr. Wallace's 
 " Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection" (Mac- 
 millan, 1870). 
 
 ^ It is curious to see how small are the advances made 
 by modern speculative Philosophers, on the theoretical 
 schemes of their ancient predecessors. Plato seems to 
 have regarded much of human knowledge as arising from 
 the recollections of some anterior state of our being. The 
 Theory of Evolution substitutes inheritance for this recol- 
 lection, and an embryological Pangenesis has been sug- 
 gested by way of supplemental aid. Would it not be 
 wiser and more truthful to call these theories by their 
 I'ightful name o^ guesses, though ingenious "Guesses at 
 Truth." See the well-known passages in Plato's " Meno"
 
 IG MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 of some former state of our being"/ still less 
 
 from the delusive inheritance of our progenitors ; 
 
 they are the indications of something* within us, 
 
 akin to something immeasurably beyond us; 
 
 tokens of something attainable yet not hitherto 
 
 attained; signs of a potential fellowship with 
 
 spirits nobler and more glorious than our own ; 
 
 they are the title-deeds of our presumptive 
 
 heirship to some brighter world than any that 
 
 has yet been formed among the starry spangles 
 
 of the skies. 
 
 " Whether we be young or old, 
 Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
 Is with infinity, and only there ; 
 With hope it is, hope that can never die, 
 Eftbrt, and expectation and desire, 
 And something evermore about to be." 
 
 Wordsvjorth. 
 
 But our knowledge of these atomic forces_, 
 so far as it at present extends, does not leave 
 us in serious doubt as to their origin ; for there 
 is a very strong presumptive evidence drawn 
 
 ^ See Wordsworth's ode on " Intimations of Immor- 
 tality," stanza 5 : — 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar."
 
 AND NATURAL EELIGION. 17 
 
 from the results of the most modern scientific 
 investigation that they are neither eternal nor 
 the products of evolution. No philosopher of 
 recent times was better acquainted than Sir J. 
 Ilerscliel with the general mechanism of nature. 
 From his contemplation of the remarkably con- 
 stant, definite, and restricted, yet various and 
 powerful interactions of these elementary mole- 
 cules, he was forced to the conviction that they 
 possessed " all the characteristics of manufactured 
 articles!' The expression is memorable, accu- 
 rate, and graphic ; it may become one of the 
 everlasting possessions of mankind. Professor 
 Maxwell,' a man whose mind has been trained 
 by the mental discipline of the same noble 
 university, arrives at the same conclusion ; but 
 as his knowledge has exceeded that of Herschel 
 on this; point, so he goes further in the same 
 direction of thought. " No theory of evolution,^^ 
 he says, '^can be formed to account for the 
 similarity of the molecules throughout all time, 
 and throughout the whole region of the stellar 
 universe, for evolution necessarily implies con- 
 
 ? See Professor Marwell's Speech at the British Asso- 
 ciation, 1873, reported in " Natwe."
 
 18 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 tinuous change, and the molecule is incapable 
 of growth or decay, of generation or destruction/'' 
 — " None of the processes of Nature, since the 
 time when Nature began, have produced the 
 slightest difference in the properties of any 
 molecule. On the other hand, the exact equality 
 of each molecule to all others of the same kind, 
 precludes the idea of its being eternal and self- 
 existent. We have reached the utmost limit of 
 our thinking faculties when we have admitted 
 that because matter cannot be eternal and self- 
 existent it must have been created."'V /^ These 
 molecules,''^ he adds, ^' continue this day as they 
 were created, perfect in number, and measure, 
 and weight ; and from the ineffaceable charac- 
 ters impressed on them we may learn that those 
 aspirations after truth in statement and justice 
 in action, which we reckon among our noblest 
 attributes as men, are ours because they are the 
 essential constituents of the image of Him, 
 Who in the beginning created not only the 
 heaven and the earth, but the materials of which 
 heaven and earth consist/'' And this, my 
 friends, this is the true outcome of the deepest, 
 the most exact, and the most recent science of
 
 a:nd natural religion. 19 
 
 our age. A grander utterance has not come 
 from the mind of a philosopher, since the days 
 when Newton concluded his Principia hy his 
 immortal scholium on the majestic personality 
 of the Creator and Lord of the universe. 
 
 I now come to the question of design in 
 Nature. Our new philosophy admits that 
 throughout Nature there are found innumerable 
 instances of wonderful adaptations ; neverthe- 
 lessj it is asserted that these adaptations are the 
 products of the actions and necessities of the 
 successive environments. It is not stated whence 
 came the capacities o.f the molecules for assum- 
 ing their new arrangements. But it is stated 
 that Mr. Darwin, whose mind is said to be ^^ the 
 most deeply stored with the choicest materials 
 of the teleologist, rejects teleology, seeking to 
 refer these wonders to natural causes.^-' This is 
 high authority, though in science, as I have said, 
 authority weighs but little. On the other hand, 
 I know for certain that so strong were the con- 
 victions of Sir John Herschel in the very con- 
 trary direction, that one of his last acts, very 
 shortly before his removal from among us, was 
 to busy himself about a MS. collection of all the 
 B %
 
 20 3I0DEIIN SCIENCE 
 
 passages in his writings where he had referred 
 to the tokens of an intelh'gent AVill in Nature.* 
 We have also heard the testimony of the greatest 
 molecular physicist now living among us. If, 
 then^ the question of design were to be settled 
 by the weight of philosophical authority, that 
 authority is on the side of an intelligent Author 
 and Governor of Nature. But in questions such 
 as this, wherein, and from whatever causes, the 
 philosophers are said to differ, I should prefer 
 to appeal to the common and average sense of 
 mankind. 
 
 I know of no greater intellectaal treat — I 
 might even call it moral — than to take Mr, 
 Darwin's most charming work on the Fertiliza- 
 tion of Orchids, and his equally charming and 
 acute monograph on the Ly thrums, and repeat, 
 as I have repeated, many of the experiments 
 and observations therein detailed. The effect on 
 my mind was an irresistible impulse to uncover 
 and bow my head, as being in the more imme^ 
 
 s " Will without Motive, Power without Design^ Thought 
 opposed to Eeasou, would be adnairable in explaining a 
 chaos, but would render little aid in accounting for a,ny- 
 thing else." Herschel's " Familiar Lectures," xii. I re^ 
 gard this little book, in some important respects, as one of 
 the wisest in our language.
 
 AND NATURAL RELIGION. 21 
 
 diate presence of the wonderful prescience and 
 benevolent contrivance of the Universal Father. 
 And I think such_, also, would be the result on 
 the convictions and the emotions of the vast 
 majority of average ^ men. I think their ver- 
 dict would be^ that no plainer marks of a con- 
 triving Will exist in a steam engine^ or a print- 
 ing press, or a telescope — I am not speaking of 
 "the whole end, scope_, and intention of that Divine 
 will, I am only speaking of the marks of its 
 existence. 
 
 Or again, recurring to our ultimate mole- 
 'cnles. The great modern advance of human 
 knowledge, and especially the wonderful appli- 
 cations of this knowledge to the purposes of the 
 arts of life, have arisen very much from the 
 existence of iron, and coal, and sulphur, and 
 platina, and silica upon our planet. Now tell 
 
 ^ A few years ago a celebrated cause was tried at Edin- 
 burgh. ; the question being whether a certain mineral was 
 coal or not coal. Several of the ablest geologists and mi- 
 croscopists of the day were called on both sides. The one 
 set deposed that the mineral was not coal at all ; the other, 
 that it was coal of the very best description. The per- 
 plexed Judge was compelled to throw aside all the scientific 
 evidence and to rely on the judgment of an average work- 
 man of intellisrence. Of course the mineral was coal.
 
 22 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 me, what were the anterior chances, prior to the 
 existence of Nature, that when a being like 
 man came, after the lapse of ages, upon our earth, 
 he would have found stored up for him, and for 
 his development in the scale of being, iron and 
 coal, and sulphur, and platina, and silica? To 
 tell me that the co-existence of all these essen- 
 tially independent existences might be the result 
 of anything short of the intention of a prescient 
 will, the evidences of a ^^ pfe-establlslied liarmony y^ 
 would be equivalent to telling me that, after 
 placing sufficient letters of the alphabet into a 
 box, there might be dredged out of it the dia- 
 log'ues of Plato, the dramas of Shakespere, and 
 the Principia of Newton. 
 
 Eut now comes the inevitable question, which 
 all along may have been perplexing your minds, 
 as I confess it once greatly perplexed my own. 
 How is it that men, endowed with nearly equal 
 capacities, and possessing nearly equal oppor- 
 tunities, should draw such different, not to say 
 such opposite, conclusions, on subjects which in 
 importance transcend all others, and beyond 
 all others tax the reason to the utmost, and touch 
 the emotions to the quick ?
 
 AND NATURAL RELIGION. 28 
 
 I think that one cause of this contrariety of 
 conviction lies in the nature of the evidences for 
 Christianity, in the natural evidences for the 
 being" of a Supreme, and for the immortality of 
 the Soul.^ These evidences from the very 
 nature of the case, cannot be mathematical, or 
 demonstrative, or scientific; they belong, rather, 
 to that class of evidence which we call probable; 
 to that class, be it observed, upon which alone 
 we determine the conduct of our lives ; for, '' to 
 us probability is the guide of life/'' And 
 although these probable evidences range greatly 
 in degree, and although not any one of them, 
 taken alone and by itself, may be sufficient to 
 command entire consent, and enforce an absolute 
 conviction, nevertheless, when taken all together, 
 
 1 A very few years ago, a pliilosopher, with whom I am 
 acquainted, was discussing the question of the Natural 
 Evidences for the Immortality of the Soul, with one of 
 the most eminent, acute, and scientific of our judges then 
 living. It was agreed that they should hold three seances 
 of an hour each, and then dispassionately form their con- 
 clusion from the weight of the probable evidence. At the 
 end of the third seance, the philosopher said : " Well, then, 
 judging from the evidence, I think that our conclusion 
 must be, that ' it is impossible to conceive that man is not 
 immortal.' " The aged judge buried his face in his hands, 
 burst into tears, and sobbed, "It is impossible."
 
 M IMODEEN SCIENCE 
 
 tliey may — they often do — by their consilience 
 from many different and mclepenclenl sources^ 
 furnish the mind with the highest moral 
 certainty of which it is capable. This we claim 
 to be especially the case with Christianity ; and 
 in arguing the case^, this consilience ought never 
 to be forgotten^ for it is by laying too great 
 stress upon one or two of these presumptive 
 evidences alone^and 'especially in converscdiony' "^ 
 that many a mind has been robbed of its peace. 
 '^For it is easy to show/'' says Bishop Butler, '^'m. 
 a short and lively manner, that such and such 
 things are liable to objection, that this and 
 another thing is of little weight in itself; but 
 impossible to show, in like manner, the united 
 force of the whole argument in one view.-'^ , i.u. 
 Now, it is especially in this region of pro- 
 bable evidence that the bias of the will comes 
 -in to warp the judgment : the bias of early 
 education, the still greater bias of a later disci- 
 pline of the intellectual and moral faculties, the 
 bias of the environment, and of party spirit, the 
 bias of a religious or of an irreligious life, the 
 bias, we are told, even of a strong or of a 
 
 2 Analogy, cli. vii. part ii.
 
 AND NATURAL EELIGION. 25 
 
 morbid mood.^ Thus, by the excessive or ex- 
 clusive cultivation of any one side of our com- 
 plex nature, intellectual or ethical, the mind 
 becomes one-handled — lop-sided. This is the 
 inevitable Nemesis of Disproportion, 
 
 In like manner, the exclusive or excessive 
 addiction to mathematical studies has a tendency 
 to render the mind averse to, or distrustful of, 
 arguments which are not demonstrative ; exces- 
 sive addiction to physiology may superinduce an 
 undue reliance on the effects of the ^'^ rhythmic 
 vibrations of the brain,-*^ or on unquestionably 
 mechanical actions of the nervous system ; ex- 
 perimental philosophy suggests the arguments 
 of measure and weight, and has been found to 
 match vaccination against prayer/ On the 
 other hand, the theologian is very liable to a 
 strong bias in favour of authority, and to cir- 
 cumscribe his views to the conditions of a world 
 
 , ,.i3 Tyiidall's Preface to his Address to tlie British Asso- 
 ciation, 1874. 
 
 4 I have considered this question of Prayer from a 
 scientific point of view, in the note to a Sermon preached 
 before the British Association at Nottingham. See my 
 Hulsean Lectures for 1867. Deighton, Bell, and Co., Cam- 
 bridge.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 not yet realized. All these tendencies,, unless 
 consciously and carefully watched, do, and of 
 necessity must, warp the judgment, and render 
 it more or less incapable of a just and impartial 
 decision. This or that line of probable evidence, 
 when presented to its consideration, is unduly 
 cast aside, according to the bias of the will ; the 
 successive threads of the evidence are rudely 
 snapped one after the other, and the consilient 
 network of the whole argument is overlooked. 
 
 It is in the modern tendency to specialism ® 
 of pursuit, that the greatest danger is to be 
 feared in regard to the philosoj)hical arguments 
 against Christianity ; for the evidences of Chris- 
 tianity are not special, but varied and co-exten- 
 sive with the whole nature of man and his 
 environments. Hence it would be well for the 
 philosopher to take into his laboratory such 
 old-fashioned authors as Butler and Paley and 
 
 ^ It is wortli observing that the late emincut Professors 
 of Geology at our two great Universities, Sedgwick 
 and Phillips, men whose minds were stored with scientific 
 knowledge drawn from a great variety of sonrces, both of 
 whom were competent mathematicians and not specialists 
 in any sense ; men, moreover, of singular candoiu' and sim- 
 plicity of mind, — came to the conclusion that the doctrine 
 of Creation by Evolution, did not, to their apprehensions, 
 express a Law of Nature.
 
 AND NATURAL EELIGION. 27 
 
 Coleridge/ and honestly test in his personal 
 experience the faith which he doubts^ before he 
 finally rejects it. Better still would it be if, 
 in the study of every manse throughout Eng- 
 land^ there were found a well-used microscope, 
 and on the lawn^ a tolerable telescope ; and best 
 of all, if those who possess influence in our 
 national universities, could see their way to the 
 enforcement of a small modicum of the practical 
 knowledge of common things, on the minds of 
 those who are to go forth and do battle with 
 the ignorance and the failings of our population, 
 and to spread light throughout the land. A 
 little knowledge of the ancient elements, fire, 
 air, earth, and water, would save many a young 
 clergyman from the vanity of ridiculous extremes. 
 
 ^ There is in my opinion no book in our language on the 
 fundamentals of the Christian Faith better suited to a 
 patient and thoughtful mind than Coleridge's " Aids to Ee- 
 flection." The late venei-ated Bishop Sumner, at one time, 
 used to recommend Aphorism xix. on Eedemption, to the 
 notice of his candidates for Ordination. With reference to 
 Christianity, Coleridge says: "Thy it. It has been eighteen 
 hundred years in existence : and has one individual, in 
 whose words you could place full confidence, left a record 
 like the following ? — I tried it, and it did not answer. . ." 
 —Aphorism vii.
 
 28 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 and from the surprise of the more wisely aild 
 widely educated among his flock. For, depend 
 upon it, whatever may be our suspicions or our 
 fears, the pursuit of the knowledge of the works 
 of nature will increase, and increase with an 
 accelerated velocity ; and if our clergy decline to 
 keep pace with it, and to direct it into whole- 
 some channels, they and their flocks will 'be 
 overtaken, though from opposite directions, b^ 
 the inevitable Nemesis of Disproportion. 
 
 I, for one, believe, not so much in the right, 
 as in the duty of every man to make the best 
 of the faculties wherewith his Maker has en- 
 trusted him ; and I meet with a grateful and a 
 hopeful thought all those unexpected accessions 
 to our knowledge of God in nature, which in 
 recent times have come to us in almost over- 
 whelming abundance. There is no need to be 
 frightened at the phantoms raised by such terms 
 as matter and force, and molecules, and proto- 
 plasmic energy, and rhythmic vibrations of the 
 brain ; there are no real terrors in a philosophy 
 which affirms the conceivability that two and 
 two might possibly make five ; or of that which 
 predicates that an infinite number of straight
 
 AND NATURAL JRELIGION. 29 
 
 lines constitute a finite surface ; or in that which 
 denies all evidence of design in nature; or in 
 that which assimilates the motives which induce 
 a parent to support his offspring, to the pleasures 
 derived from wine and music ; or in that w^hich 
 boldly asserts the unknowableness of the 
 Supreme, and the vanity of prayer. Surely 
 philosophies which involve such results can have 
 no permanent grasp on human nature : they are 
 in themselves suicidal/ and in their turn, and 
 after their brief day, will, like other such philo- 
 sophies, be refuted or denied by the next comer, 
 and are doomed to accomplish the happy 
 despatch. 
 ^.-Meanwhile we have the means of at least 
 
 " * Mr. Mivart's word is " internecine ; " Dr. M. Arnold's is 
 " dismal." See " Contemporary Eeview," Oct., 1874, p. 776 
 and p. 818. With reference to the nnlimited time de- 
 manded by the Theory of Evolution, it may be remarked, 
 that if the resultant of the forces of evolution acting on 
 an organism, be expressed as a d^fiyiite integral with the 
 time from its appearance in organic form as independent 
 variable, and the superior limit a.d. 1874, is it not con- 
 ceivable that the result should, as is the case with many 
 such integrals, be either nothing or a small quantity ? 
 This seems to me to be worth consideration, as a possible 
 source of fallacy ; and is very nearly the mathematical ex- 
 pression of the argument adduced by the Duke of Argyll 
 in his *' Reign of Law," p. 273, ed. 3.
 
 30 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 partially summarizing the results of modern 
 discovery on the interpretation of the revelation 
 of God^s Will contained in the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures. The discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, 
 and Kepler taug-ht the Christian Church that 
 the language of the Bible was to be understood 
 in the ordinary sense of the ordinary language 
 of men, and was not to be strained into an ada- 
 mantine literalness. The subsequent discoveries 
 of geology have carried a similar lesson still 
 further, and we may safely conclude, that in the 
 earlier chapters of Genesis the great Father of 
 Mankind is teaching His children as c/iildreUjand 
 only up to the measure of their capacities and 
 their needs, at and about the time of the Keve- 
 lation. At the same time, we find that He has 
 endowed them with vast and various powers and 
 capacities, each and all of which they are bound 
 "to develope, and thereby to learn for themselves 
 more and more of His will in Nature. Lastly, 
 the course of scientific discovery has led to the 
 certainty that the universe at large, our own 
 physical frames, and our mental and moral consti- 
 tution, are arranged on a much more mechanical 
 principle than had hitherto been conceived. The
 
 AND NATURAL RELIGION. 31 
 
 Christian student and the philosophical divine 
 will be wise to expect a still further development 
 of knowledge in the same direction. On the 
 other side^ we have at length been brought^ by 
 philosophical conclusions,, from the most advanced 
 scientific knowledge of the day, to the philoso- 
 phical certainty that matter is not eternal, but 
 that from the beginning of Nature it was endued 
 with very wonderful properties by some Intelli- 
 gent Will. This is the latest and the grandest 
 E/Cvelation of Nature. Here we may safely stop. 
 For my own part, a lifetime passed in the pur- 
 suit and the communication of natural know- 
 ledge, so far from effacing or obscuring the faith 
 in which I was brought up, has served to deepen 
 and to render more intelligent the conviction that 
 the sacred Scriptures, properly interpreted, are 
 to us the Word of God; that the Great Father 
 of all has rendered Himself knowable to man- 
 kind by the manifestation of Christ, and that 
 in this knowledge consists their highest life; 
 that He has redeemed them by the atonement 
 of His Son, and illuminates and strengthens all 
 who come to Him, by His Spirit. 
 
 GILBERT AND KIVIKOTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOIIN's SUfJARE, LONDON.
 
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