Science Not Opposed to Religion.

There is, of course, no opposition or conflict between modern science, with its great results and the enlarged conceptions which it has evolved in the human mind, and religion, using this last word in the sense that points to the existence of the supreme mind and the relations existing between that mind and the derived mind of man. So much was recently demonstrated with rare eloquence, and also with the utmost ease, by one to whom also, as a clergyman, we laymen of all denominations are deeply indebted for the sympathetic and helpful interest he has shown in some of our lay difficulties, and for the broader and more tolerant tone that has been communicated by him to the discussion of many public questions—I mean the Bishop of Melbourne.

At present no more can be said than this, that there exists no opposition between religion and modern science. Considerable advances have been made by science in our own day in the direction of the probable unity of the elements of matter and the probable unity of the originating causes of matter and motion. But science retains an attitude of reserve, and still refuses to speculate. This attitude, however, cannot in all probability, long be maintained.

It is not merely the right; it is a necessity for science to speculate upon, to inquire into all phenomena, mental as well as material. But science, affrighted by ecclesiasticism and its not yet exhausted terrors, has for a long time almost wholly abandoned the field of highest speculation to the Christian churches, and they in turn do not care to occupy it. " Non Jingo hypotheses, I do not frame hypotheses," exclaimed, in the early days of modern science, the illustrious but timid English philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, alarmed at the consequences that were to follow from his formula of universal gravitation—the grandest generalisation in physical science ever propounded by the human intellect. He wished, if it were possible, to confine his formula to the bare statement of the terms of a mathematical proposition. But Euler, not less distinguished as a mathematician than Newton, declared that gravity must be caused either by a spirit in the particles of matter, like "the directing angel," supposed by Kepler to reside in and to regulate the movements of the planets, or by some subtle material medium. Euler accepted the latter hypothesis, and this is still adopted and applied by science in the present day to explain the operation of particular modes of motion, light and heat, as well as of gravity; although its sufficiency, even for this purpose, is undemonstrated, while its insufficiency to account for other modes of motion, as well as for any vital or mental phenomena, is admitted.

But a great and a most happy change has begun, and has made rapid progress within our own time. Ecclesiasticism has become far page 13 less aggressive and violent than it was even a quarter of a century ago, while science, on the other hand, has gained confidence and courage in a proportional degree. We can measure the extent of this change by a comparison of two events, both of them within the recollection of some whom I now address. .In the year 1859 Mr. Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection made its appearance, and instantly there rose from scores of English pulpits, and through a hundred channels in the English press, cries of indignation and scorn, and also, it must be said, of fierce personal vituperation, directed against the blameless author of that book. In the early part of last year (1882), when Mr. Darwin died, the English press was unanimous in its eulogies of his life and labours, and sermons were actually preached in Westminster Abbey and in St. Paul's Cathedral, by two most distinguished clergyman, in which not only did the simple character of the illustrious student receive due commendation, but his great speculations and their results upon the thought of the age were referred to in terms of respect.