taking the sense. But maturer knowledge and further intellectual growth will take them beyond this childishness, and make them, not merely observers, but also interpreters of nature.

I will give another illustration. Science teaches that all thinking, volition and emotion involve molecular action of the brain. Suppose some instrument invented by which you can look through the skull and observe this molecular action. You find some Shakespeare composing Macbeth, some Newton writing the Principia, some Paul glowing with self-sacrificing love; and in each case you make an exact chart of the course or orbit of every moving molecule. You have an exact delineation of the action of the brain; but it bears not the remotest resemblance to the thoughts and feelings expressed by it, to the imaginative creation of Macbeth, the mathematical demonstrations of the Principia, the self-sacrificing love of Paul. You have observed the phenomena, you have totally missed their significance. Suppose, now, an infinitesimal inhabitant of the brain, to whom the brain is the whole known universe and to whom the motions of its molecules are relatively as great as to us the motions of the planets. Suppose this infinitesimal being provides himself with telescope and microscope and observes all these motions of the molecules, classifies them by resemblance, and coordinates them in their uniform sequences. Now he claims that he has created a science of the universe-this brain which he lives in being to him the universe-and yet he entirely misses the thought, the volition, the emotions expressed in these movements, and has no knowledge of the intelligent being whose thought, volition and emotion the action of the brain expresses. How plain it is that this infinitesimal being deludes himself with the mere show of knowledge while he misses its deepest reality. And yet it is no more a mere show without reality than is the science of the natural universe which confines itself to the resemblances and sequences of phenomena, with no apprehension of the thought which the phenomena express, or of the supreme intelligence in which they originate, or the rational system in which they exist.

Ludwig Noiré, speaking of Büchner's materialism, compares it to a child's description of music, who describes it as the action of the player putting his hand on the keys, moving them up and down, and crossing his arms, but leaves out the music.*

VIII. Another inference from the foregoing discussion is that science in the three grades must be in harmony with itself. These three grades of scientific thought are but the different processes of intelligence, each necessary to the other, all necessary to complete intelligence. When they are rightly apprehended conflict is impossible.

• Die Welt als Entwickelung des Geistes: ss., 18, 19.

We have, therefore, rational ground of certainty that the progress of empirical and noetic science can never conflict with theology nor invalidate it. And it is equally certain that the true scientific spirit is never hostile to the truly religious spirit which rules all right theological inquiry. Scientists continually insist on the "searching, open, humble mind;" and Jesus said: "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The obscuration of religious belief does not result from science, but from the incompleteness or perversion of science. We have reasonable ground of assurance that any such obscuration attendant on the scientific study of nature must be temporary, and the ultimate and abiding issue of scientific investigation and progress must be in the future, as it has always been in the past, to confirm man's belief in God, and to purify, illuminate and enlarge the knowledge of Him. Frau von MarenholzBülow relates the following: "Froebel said, 'Let the empirics work in their quarries; they will bring treasures to light which are also necessary.' 'It appears to me,' said I, 'that the investigators of nature, who work in the dark mines of the material world by the light of their own lanterns and imagine that there is nothing brighter, no sunlight, must sometime or other break through the surface above, when they can no longer deny the brighter light of the sun.'"*

Mr. Lewes, in the opening of the "Problems of Life and Mind,” says: "Some considerable thinkers argue that religion has played its part in the evolution of humanity—a noble part, yet only that of a provisional organ, which in the course of development must be displaced by a final organ. Other thinkers, and I follow these, consider that religion will continue to regulate the evolution; but that to do this in the coming ages, it must occupy a position similar to the one it occupied in the past, and express the highest thought of the time, as that thought widens with the ever-growing experience." I accept this demand on theology as reasonable, though I differ from Mr. Lewes as to what complete compliance with the demand implies. However far empirical and rationalistic science may advance, true theology must still be competent to maintain its position as the Science of sciences and the Philosophy of philosophies. It must be competent to take all the results of the highest thought and integrate, interpret and vindicate them in a rational system. However far science may advance, it can never transcend Theism, which recognizes perfect Reason as the ultimate ground of the universe, and its truths, laws, ideals and ends as the archetypes which the universe is progressively expressing. Man cannot overleap reason any more than he can over

Reminiscences of Froebel, p. 267.

leap the zenith of the firmament; for reason is man's intellectual firmament, the everlasting sunlight which lies about him; and yet he carries it with him, and is always beneath its zenith wherever he goes. Science by no advancement can set aside the supremacy and universality of reason; for it would set aside the godlike power of man which makes science possible, and annul its own essence and calling as science; for science consists essentially in finding the product and expression of reason in all that is. Theism therefore gives the grand reality by which theology is competent to integrate, interpret and account for all things under any possible progress of science. The progress of reason can never transcend reason. The progress of science may purify, elucidate and enlarge theoretical knowledge, but it can never annul the Theism of which true theology in its remotest ramifications of doctrine is the exposition.

I accept, therefore, the words of President Eliot of Harvard University, though perhaps giving a meaning different from his own to his expressions: "Science has thus exalted the idea of God, the greatest service which can be rendered to humanity. Each age must worship. its own thought of God, and each age may be judged by the worthiness of that thought. In displaying the uniform continuous action of unrepenting nature in its march from good to better, science has inevitably directed the attention of men to the most glorious attributes of that divine intelligence which acts through nature with the patience of eternity and the fixity of all-foreseeing wisdom. A hundred lifetimes ago a Hebrew Seer gave utterance to one of the grandest thoughts that ever mind of man conceived. . . . This thought, tender and consoling toward human weakness and insignificance as a mother's embrace, but sublime also as the starry heights and majestic as the onward sweep of the ages, science utters as the sum of all its teaching, the sublime result of all its searching and its meditations, and applies alike to the whole universe and to its last atom: The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.'"*

61. The alleged Conflict of Natural Science and
Theology.

I. Conflict between natural science and theology can arise only from error or incompleteness of knowledge on the one side or the other. A true and complete science of nature can never be in conflict with true and complete theology. Students of natural science do no violence to science in remaining theists or Christians, as multitudes of them have done. Religious unbelief does not spring from science but from ig

• Report of Speech at the opening of the Am. Museum of Natural History.

norance or error either in respect to science or theology. We do both natural science and theology great injustice in using language which implies that physical science is, of itself as science, in conflict with theology, or that theology is in conflict with it, or that as theologians we need to be afraid of its discoveries or in an attitude of opposition to its progress. Empirical science declares the particular realities of the universe and their factual relations and laws; and it is impossible that the true science of the facts and laws of the universe can be in conflict with the true science of the God of the universe.

1. Conflict may arise from the incompleteness of knowledge incidental to its progressiveness. Thought proceeds from apprehension through differentiation to unification, from thesis through antithesis to synthesis. Thought, therefore, at a certain stage of its progress is necessarily occupied with differences, opposites and antitheses. If it stops there it will mistake these for contraries or contradictories; but if it push on to its completeness it may see that they are merely complemental aspects of the same reality, or different particulars related and harmonious in a larger unity. This liability to mistake is incidental to the progress of knowledge within the sphere of empirical science; and we cannot escape the same liability in the transition from empirical to philosophical and theological knowledge. But in fact these seeming contradictions may be only the contrasts necessary to a complete and full-orbed knowledge.

Incompleteness of knowledge is also incidental to the specialties to which students are shut up by the vastness of the sphere of knowledge and the limits of the human mind. When one devotes himself exclusively to the empirical study of nature, the world of matter heaves its hulk up between him and the spiritual light, as the earth on which we dwell comes between us and the sun and shrouds us in night. And such is now the extent of natural science that one must devote a lifetime to master a subdivision of a particular science. And this limitation of the sphere of life-long studies unfits for comprehending the larger unities of philosophy and theology.

Conflict may also arise from positive errors as to particular realities on the one side or the other. These are errors of observation or inference which further investigation will correct; and the correction of the error ends the conflict.

2. Conflict may arise from an error of method; from overlooking the distinction of empirical, noetic and theological science. Empirical science may intrude into the sphere of philosophy and attempt to decide philosophical and theological questions by empirical methods. So Laplace argued that there is no God because he had never found him with the telescope; and as it has been argued that there is no spirit in

man, because the anatomist has never discovered it. On the other hand, theology has intruded into the sphere of natural science and attempted to settle questions of fact which can be determined only by empirical observation and inference.

3. Conflict may arise from the claim of science in one grade to be the whole of human science, to the exclusion of all other.

I am not aware that philosophy or theology ever made this claim; though they have often fallen into error by not sufficiently recognizing their dependence on empirical science for their factual contents. But the empirical science of nature has again and again asserted its claim to the whole of human knowledge. And it is this claim, persistently and widely made now, which is the source of the present antagonism of some students of natural science against theology.

II. The reconciliation can be effected only by the advancement of science in each grade to completeness by the progressive discovery of truth and elimination of error.

1. The claim that empirical natural science includes all science, involves complete atheism and is entirely irreconcilable with theology. It denies that man is capable either of psychological, philosophical or theological knowledge. If man is incapable of knowledge that transcends the empirical, he is incapable of knowing God. With those who make this claim there is no propriety in discussing the question of the existence of God. Their false theory of knowledge shuts us out from approaching that question. The question with them is as to the reality of human knowledge. We demonstrate from the constitution and history of man that he is capable of noetic and theological knowledge, and that the denial of this involves equally the denial of all human knowledge. All atheism rests on principles which necessarily involve complete agnosticism. If man cannot know God, he cannot know

anything.

2. Students of physical science often assert that its method is entirely different from the method of metaphysics and theology; and that therefore conflict is inevitable and irreconcilable. In seeking reconciliation on this point we must inquire what the true method is and wherein on either side there is a deviation from it. The true method will accord with the law that knowledge must pass through the three grades which I have elucidated. The difference of method has originated in the fact that physical science has tried to limit itself within pure empiricism, while philosophy and theology have sometimes tried to proceed by a priori principles and abstract notions without seeking their basis in observed facts of experience. So far as on either side investigation has been thus partial, it must be corrected and broadened. On each side we already see this process far advanced. Comte