trolled by a living Person, accessible to prayer, influenced by love, able and willing to foresee, to intervene, to guide and wistfully to lead without compulsion spirits in some sort akin to Himself?

Or is the world a self-generated, self-controlling machine, complete and fully organised for movement, either up or down, for progress or degeneration, according to the chances of heredity and the influence of environment? Has the world, as it were, secreted or arrived at life and mind and consciousness by the play of natural forces acting on the complexities of highly developed molecular aggregates; at first, lifecells, ultimately brain-cells; and these are not the organ or instrument, but the very reality and essence of life and of mind?

If there be any other orders of conscious existence in the universe, as probably there are, are they also locked up on their several planets, without the power of communicating or helping or informing, and all working out their own destiny in permanent isolation? Everything in such a world would be not only apparently but really a definite sequence of cause and effect, just as it seems to us here; and prayer, to be effectual in such a world must be not what theologians mean by prayer, but must be either simple meditation for acquiescence in the inevitable, or else a petition addressed to some other of the dwellers in our time and place, that they may be induced by benevolent acts to ease some of the burdens to which their petitioners are liable.

We thus return to our original thesis that the .. question or outstanding controversy hetreat. tion so and faith rests upon two distinct convertions to the universe: the one, that of a self-contained and cold, sufficient universe, with no outlook into or boke anything beyond, uninfluenced by ear We except such as is connected with a richle end material body; and the other competition that universe lying open to all manner of crimbuel ences, permeated through and though with a D. spirit, guided and watched by living minds, an through the medium of law indeed, but with ind. 11 gence and love behind the law: a universe by pom self-sufficient or self-contained, but with gensiti. drils groping into another supersensuous existence, where reign laws hitherto unimagined science, but laws as real and as mighty as the which the material universe is governed.

According to the one conception, fal and prayer absurd; the only individ lies in the memory of descendan cheerful acquiescence in fate are attributes possible: and the furt is determined by the low c cumstances of space.

According to the the mighty to the remprot sa may feel ourselvog o'time cosmogony of winton] 1 ing from lowly sinmas

1

3

activity, world without end, and may catch in anticipation some glimpses of that "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves."

The whole controversy hinges, in one sense, on a practical pivot-the efficacy of prayer. Is prayer to hypothetical and supersensuous beings as senseless and useless as it is unscientific, or does prayer pierce through the husk and apparent covering of the sensuous universe, and reach something living, loving, and helpful beyond?

And in another sense the controversy turns upon a question of fact. Do we live in a universe permeated with life and mind: life and mind independent of matter and unlimited in individual duration? Or is life limited, in space to the surface of planetary masses of matter, and in time to the duration of the material envelope essential to its manifestation?

The answer is given in one way by orthodox modern science, and in another way by Religion of all times; and until these opposite answers are made consistent, the reconciliation between Science and Faith is incomplete.

CHAPTER II

THE RECONCILIATION

I

T may or may not have been observed, by anyone

who has read the previous chapter,-but in so far as it has been missed, the whole meaning has been misconceived.-that when speaking of the atmosphere or the conclusions, the doctrines or the tendency, of "science," I was careful always to explain that I meant orthodox or present-day science; meaning not the comprehensive grasp of a Newton, but science as now interpreted by its recognised official exponents, -by the average Fellow of the Royal Society for instance. Just as by "faith" I intended not the ecstatic insight aroused in a seer by some momentary revelation, but the ordinary workaday belief of the average enlightened theologian. And my thesis was that the attitudes of mind appropriate to these two classes, were at present fundamentally diverse; that there was still an outstanding controversy, or ground for controversy, between science and faith, although active fighting has been suspended, and although all bitterness has passed from the conflict, let us hope never to return. But the diversity remains, and for

the present it is better so, if it has not achieved its work. Eliminating the bitterness, the conflict has been useful, and it would be far from well even to attempt to bring it to a close prematurely. But yet there must be an end to it some time; reconciliation is bound to lie somewhere in the future; no two parts or aspects of the Universe can permanently and really be discordant. The only question is where the meeting-place may be; whether it is nearest to the orthodox faith or to the orthodox science of the present day. This question is the subject of the present chapter, which is a sequel to the preceding. Let me, greatly daring, presume to enter upon the inquiry into what is really true and essential in the opposing creeds, how much of each has its origin in over-hasty assumption or fancy, and how far the opposing views are merely a natural consequence of imperfect vision of opposite sides of the same veil.

First among the truths that will have to be accepted by both sides, we may take the reign of Law, sometimes called the Uniformity of Nature. The discovery of uniformity must be regarded as mainly the work of Science: it did not come by revelation. In moments of inspiration it was glimpsed,-"the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," but the glimpse was only momentary, the Hebrew "atmosphere” was saturated with the mists of cataclysm, visible judgments, and conspicuous interferences. We used to be told that the Creator's methods were adapted to the stage of His Creatures, and varied from age to age: that it was really His actions, and not their mode of