to show that, if all the negations of the fashionable scientific world were true, there still remains a religion of considerable and indispensable use.' And he goes on to assert that his only chance of obtaining a hearing from those for whom he wrote lay in dismissing once for all whatever savoured in any way of the supernatural. Then, having set forth that the one ambition of the vast school of crusaders of the fashionable scientific world is to destroy religion, he proceeds :

Only, I notice that just in the moment of victory they are seized with a misgiving. They begin to stammer out that it is not religion they hate, but only Christianity; that of course when Christianity is destroyed some other religion must be substituted for it. I try to catch them in this mood. I ask them to tell me what religion they will substitute. Now, if it appears that this religion is, after all, a good deal like Christianity, is not this result such as ought to be welcome to Christians?

These passages merit special attention. They are the index, the key to the book: an ex cathedra précis of it.

It is to be noted then that Natural Religion shows: 1, that, if all the negations of the fashionable scientific world are true, there still remains a religion of considerable and indispensable use; 2, by implication, that this religion is absolutely free from the least savour of the supernatural; 3, that the ambition of the scientific school is to destroy religion; 4, that in the moment of victory they do not hate religion but only Christianity; 5, that when Christianity is destroyed some other religion must be substituted for it; 6, that the religion they will substitute is a good deal like Christianity.

Here we have the same looseness of expression, the same want of What can the clearness and precision that marks the volume itself. moment of victory mean if not the accomplished destruction of Christianity? If the moment of victory has been reached, Christianity is already destroyed. If it is already destroyed, it follows that the religion of the scientific school is already in possession-since it is already in existence, otherwise it could not be a good deal like Christianity.

But this by the way: with logical sequence we have not, for the moment, anything to do. Our main concern is with the assertion that in the fashionable scientific world, which hates Christianity, a religion exists absolutely free from any suspicion of the supernatural, a good deal like Christianity. At first sight the proposition involves a contradiction in terms. Christianity is certainly supernatural in the highest degree; but all religions are supernatural in a measure. Supernaturalism is inseparable from religion: from natural religion But properly so called, as from revealed religion in its strictest sense. the whole purpose of the book, on the authority of the author, is contained in the proposition; and therefore the very life of his argument may be said to hang on the one word 'religion."

1

If, using the word in its common world-wide natural sense, he proves the existence of religion in the fashionable scientific world, then he has made the great discovery of unity where the discord of dissent alone has hitherto been discerned. But, if he uses it in any other sense, if he tries to make it cover other notions, he may convince us, for instance, of the existence of credulity or materialism, of atheism or superstition, of idolatry or agnosticism, or anything else obnoxious to religion, in the fashionable scientific world; but the term itself will then be no better than a trope, and his argument will be of less value than many a demonstration depending on a hypothesis as useless as the pictured hook on which we can hang only a pictured chain.

In the intellectual system of the world we find standing out with absolute distinctness from one another, though leading to one another and mutually elucidating one another, three chief objects of human study: Nature, Man, God. They are the main terms of our knowledge. And so clearly defined is the habitual distinction of our conceptions of which they are the verbal embodiment, that in speaking of any one of them we should not for a moment think it necessary in any way to guard against its being mistaken for either of the others. So that, if I were to speak of the study of nature amongst ordinarily cultivated people, I should convey to them a distinct intellectual impression, and one that would be no more likely to be confounded by them with the idea that would follow the introduction into our conversation of the word God or theology than this would be likely to be confounded with the thought I should awaken were I to mention anthropology or the science of man. Nature does not mean and never has meant God or man, and man does not mean God or nature, nor does God mean nature or man. And as nature is the object of physical or natural science in all its various branches, including mathematics and astronomy, so theology proprie dicta is the Sermo de Deo, having God for its object, and anthropology, as its very name indicates, is the science of man-has man for its object and embraces metaphysics, including mental and moral science.

Further, though the scientific man may be lost in admiration at the marvels he discovers in nature, or the beauties of the moral and intellectual endowments of man, no ordinarily educated person would think of calling such admiration religion. It might become an act of religion if, passing beyond the immediate object of his contemplation, the investigator, like Linnæus at the sight of the golden field of genista, transferred his admiration from the creation to the Creator and worshipped God; not otherwise. So long as the tribute of admiration is limited to the phenomena of nature, it is of the earth earthy; it is admiration and nothing more. Religion is not mere admiration or worship; it is Divine worship. Cicero held this as

explicitly as St. Thomas Aquinas: 'Religio est virtus quæ superiori cuidam naturæ, quam divinam vocant, cultum cæremoniamque affert."11 A Divine object is essential to it: 'religio proprie importat ordinem ad Deum.' 12 It is the bond that unites the lower being to the higher, man to God: dicitur religio quasi a religando se Deo: cui alligari debemus tamquam indeficienti principio.' 13

Moreover, religion manifested in those acts of worship and reverence that constitute the bond and issue in the union or contact of two beings has ever been accompanied by a sense of subordination and obligation that sense of duty and submission-the æternas pœnas in morte timendum '—so hateful to Lucretius that he strove to rid the world of it with his bitter invective against the times :

Humana ante oculos fœde cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi sub religione:

and exulted in the efforts of Epicurus

Quare religio pedibus subjecta vicissim
Obteritur, nos exæquat victoria cælo.

Now these words nature, God, religion, in their old signification, it is most necessary to hold fast, whilst we turn to the use of them and their contraries in Natural Religion. Otherwise it will be impossible, in the maze in which we shall find ourselves, to appreciate fully the danger by which language is threatened and the subtle process by which its subversion is being effected: a process that Renan prepared us for when he patronisingly spoke of God, Providence, soul, and immortality as 'good old words; a little heavy perhaps, but which philosophy will interpret in senses more and more refined.'14

In the first chapter we read that, 'If modern science be right. the very notion of God seems to be removed altogether from the domain of practical life' (p. 12). This is clear and straightforward, and reading it, we feel no doubt as to whether or not our grammatical apprehension of it differs from that of the author. But as we read on, a certain confusion begins to be apparent :

I desire to insist upon the point that when science speaks of God as a myth or a hypothesis, and declares the existence of God to be doubtful and destined always to remain doubtful, it is speaking of a particular conception of God, of God conceived as benevolent, as outside of nature, as personal as the cause of phenomena.

Science [of course we are always to suppose that in Natural Religion science means modern or fashionable science] opposes to God nature. When it denies God, it denies the existence of any power beyond or superior to nature; and it may deny anything like a cause of nature. It believes in certain laws of co-existence and sequence in phenomena, and in denying God it means to deny that anything

11 Cicero, De Invent.

12 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Minor.
13 Id. Theologica Summa Compendium.
11 Renan, Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse.

further can be known. God and nature then express notions which are different in an important particular. But it is evident enough that these notions are not the opposites that controversy would represent them to be. On the contrary, they coincide up to a certain point. Those who believe in nature may deny God; but those who believe in God, believe as a matter of course in nature also, since God includes nature, as the whole includes the part. It is no doubt fashionable to rethe present theology as disregarding nature, as passing by the laws which govern universe, and occupying itself solely with occasional suspensions of them, or with ulterior, inscrutable causes. But this conception of theology is derived from a partial view of it (pp. 16, 17).

And does not the confusion increase? Is it not bewildering in the rapidity with which terms and notions are shifted and made to change and interchange places and assume new positions? It needs. a steady eye and great patience to watch its course.

But, if on the one hand, the study of nature be one part of the study of God, is it not true on the other that he who believes only in nature is a theist, and has a theology? . . . If we look at things, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man has a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God who feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself and is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which I he finds safety and happiness. And such now is nature to the scientific man. do not now say that it is good or satisfying to worship such a God, but I say that no class of men since the world began have ever more truly believed in a God, or more ardently, or with more conviction worshipped Him. The scientific man strains

his mind actually to realise God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he traces Him, ‘distance inexpressible by numbers that have name.’ Meanwhile, to the theologian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty words when applied to the object of his worship. He does not realise them in actual facts and definite computation (pp. 19, 20).

He would be a wonderful man, surely, who could so realise infinity and eternity. Had Lucretius not confounded intellectual notions with the conceptions of the imagination, we probably should never have heard of his eternal javelin-thrower; and but for an analogous oversight the author of Natural Religion could scarcely have treated infinity and eternity as things of practical experience and placed them within the very sphere of physical phenomena.

However, taking the passage as a whole, could we for a moment say that Sir Andrew Clark was one degree too severe had it been specially in his thoughts when he designated a particular method of controversial theology as an unpardonable sin, a juggling with words and ideas, throwing dust into people's eyes so that controversies that cannot be settled may be stifled'? And could anything be more unworthy than the sudden contrast (p. 20) of the Eternal, the Infinite, the All-embracing' with the degraded idea of God as the head of the clerical interest, a sort of schoolmaster, or philanthropist,' in order to insinuate, nay rather to assert, that it is only the latter that modern science has revolted from, whilst adoring more profoundly and adhering more

closely than any so-called believer to the true Object of Divine worship? And even granting for a moment that Christianity has become corrupt, has dwindled from its original type, does the author of Natural Religion really mean to say that the fashionable scientific school is more prepared to admit the God of the Patriarchs and Evangelists? God as He is revealed in the Old and New Testament; the Almighty God of Genesis; or the mighty and terrible God, the God of Truth, the Eternal God of Deuteronomy; the God of Glory of David; the Most High God of Daniel; or God the Omnipotent Creator of St. John, by whom all things were made, and without whom was made nothing that was made? Would those devotees of modern science who, lost in admiration at the guesses in the dark of their teachers, cry 'Eureka' on the invention of Bathybius, or defend with the warmth of a fanatic the theory of 'a plastidulic soul,' accept Him? Would Dr. Nägeli or Professor Häckel or Professor Tyndall or Professor Huxley acknowledge Him?

Then, too, observe how gradually and subtly the process of shifting the relative positions of our old words and ideas is effected. To begin with, God is placed in distinct opposition to nature, then nature is changed into a Power-with a capital-worshipped by the scientific man, and whilst our attention is diverted by this act of worship, the power becomes a living Deity, greater than the God of the Christians, a personal God, God Himself, known to be eternal to the scientific man as he strains his mind to realise God's infinity.

But to continue our examination. When the worshippers of nature say, 'As for God, we know nothing of Him; it is a name belonging to a distinct system of philosophy,' they are 'playing with words' (p. 22). By what name they call the object of their contemplation is in itself a matter of little importance. Whether they say God, or prefer to say Nature, the important thing is that their minds are filled with the sense of a power to all appearance infinite and eternal, a power to which their own being is inseparably connected, in the knowledge of whose ways alone is safety and well-being, in the contemplation of which they find a beatific vision. Well! This God is also the God of the Christians. That the God of the Christians is something more does not affect this fact. Nature, according to all systems of Christian theology, is God's ordinance. Whether with science you stop short at nature, or with Christianity believe in a God who is the author of nature, in either case nature is divine, for it is either God or the work of God.' As well argue that a clock is a man because it is either a man or the work of man.

The consideration of 'the abuse of the atheism' introduces another variation in the application of the word God. 'Atheism is a disbelief in the existence 15 of God, that is, a disbelief in any 15 regularity in

15 Author's italics.