Church-Theology in its relation to Science.

"In so far as Church belief is still committed to a given kosmogony and natural history of Man, it lies open to scientific refutation, and has already received from it many a wound under which it visibly pines away. It is needless to say that the new 'book of Genesis' page 65 which resorts to Lucretius for its 'first beginnings,' to protoplasm for its fifth day, to 'natural selection' for its Adam and Eve, and to evolution for all the rest, contradicts the old book at every point; and inasmuch as it dissipates the dream of Paradise, and removes the tragedy of the Fall, cancels at once the need and the scheme of Redemption, and so leaves the historical churches of Europe crumbling away from their very foundations. If any one would know how utterly unproducible in modern daylight is the theology of the symbolical books, how absolutely alien from the real springs of our life, let him follow for a few hours the newest movement of ecclesiastical reform, and listen to the reported Conferences at Bonn, on the remedies for a divided Christendom."

Rev. Principal Martineau.

"If Theologians will once bring themselves to look upon Nature, or the Material Universe, as the embodiment of the Divine Thought, and at the scientific study of nature as the endeavour to discover and apprehend that thought, they will see that it is their duty, instead of holding themselves altogether aloof from the pursuit of science, or stopping short in the search of scientific truth wherever it points towards a result that seems in discordance with their preformed conceptions, to apply themselves honestly to the study of it, as a Revelation of Mind and Will of the Deity, which is certainly not less authoritative than that which He has made to us through the recorded thoughts of religiously-inspired men, and which is fitted, in many cases, to afford its true interpretation. And they cannot more powerfully attract the scientific student to religion than by taking up his highest and grandest thought, and placing it in that religious light which imparts to it a yet greater glory. They will then perceive that although, if God be outside the Physical Universe, those unbounded ideas of its vastness which modern science opens to us, remove Him further and further from us, yet, if he be embodied in it, every such extension enlarges our notion of His Being."

Dr. William B. Carpenter.

"It would be well for the philosopher to take in his laboratory such old-fashioned authors as Butler, and Paley, and 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 England, 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 failings of our population, and to spread light throughout the land. A little knowledge of the ancient elements—fire, air, earth, and water—would page 66 save many a young clergyman from the vanity of ridiculous extremes, and from the surprise of the more wisely and 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 wholesome channels, they and their flocks will be overtaken, though from opposite directions, by 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 entrusted him; and I meet with a grateful and a hopeful thought in all those unexpected accessions to our knowledge of God in Nature which in recent times have come to us in almost overwhelming abundance."

Rev. Professor Pritchard.