while Science seems to be a mass of changing opinion. To the careful student of Nature, on the other hand, Science gives a body of carefully built up Truth which is verifiable in all its details-while Religion seems to rest on personal impressions which may be very vivid, and yet mistaken. The whole tone and atmosphere is so different in the two spheres of thought that we cannot take either one or other as the type of Truth, and the standard of Truth which we will apply all round. It is not possible to reassure any earnest man by this platitude about the identity of religious and scientific truth. This identification may be looked for as an ultimate result; but we need guidance in a world where our scientific knowledge is incomplete, and our religious knowledge partial.

We may, however, get one step forward if we note one reason for the difference between religious belief and scientific attainment in the fact that they start at opposite poles. Science begins with the particular, with observation and generalization, and seeks for the Universal. Our Religion begins with the Universal-One God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible-and seeks to recognize a universal element-the Divine Purpose—in all particular incidents. The two approach the problem of the Universe, and the explanation of it from opposite sides, and so they seem to lie in different planes. They do not fit together; they appear, at all events, to be mutually inconsistent. Not only are the aspects different, but neither aspect is fully apprehended, so far as our intelligence is concerned. We need not be surprised at the difficulty we feel in combining the two sides accurately. All we can hope to do is to recognize the differences between the two modes of thought; we may perhaps find that, just because they are so different, they serve to supplement one another.

II

Even at the risk of some repetition it may be worth while to point the contrast with the habit of mind I deprecate more definitely. In the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries the differences were minimized or overlooked. There was a tendency to try to blend science and religion, by using so far as possible common terms, and bringing both under common ideas;

we can now see that such attempts at forming an amalgam were premature, and did not do justice either to Science or to Religion.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the world had been impressed by the advance of Natural Science, and the recognition of similar forces as operative under similar laws throughout the physical universe, and it seemed possible without irreverence to think and speak of the Divine Being in terms borrowed from Science. There is, as we say, Universal Causation, and then we seem to bring Science and Religion into line by speaking of God as the great First Cause. From the religious point of view this attempted accommodation to the scientific habit of mind is unsatisfying, because the conception of the Deity which is thus accentuated is so meagre; it is emptied of all that calls forth devotion or inspires to duty. The attitude of such men as William Law and John Wesley to the Rational Theologians of the day elucidates the defectiveness of such religion. The scientific conception of a cause is that of an invariable antecedent; a First Cause does not necessarily suggest either Reason or Goodness; it does not involve ideas either of Purpose or of Love. The view which it sets before us of the Universe is inadequate; it seems to reduce the whole to mere mechanical regularity, if we set ourselves to find natural law in the spiritual world. Science does not give us appropriate conceptions to apply either to the nature of God, or to the course of the world, as they appear to the religious consciousness. There is a similar defect in this amalgam, when we view it from the side of Science. In making particular observations the observer has definite data before him-actual phenomena which he can verify over and over again. The Law of Universal Causation is a postulate without which he cannot proceed in his work; but it is a postulate, and not something which he has proved by his researches. He uses it as a help to understand the material universe better; but to take the principle, as writers on Natural Religion did, as a basis on which to build an elaborate system of thought, is a different matter. Scientific men in the eighteenth century were quite ready to use the principle in this fashion; but the advance of empirical science in the last century has brought about a change. The modern student is dissatisfied with such speculation; he seems to be taken away from actuality altogether, and to be dealing with words and phrases rather than

things. It is all in the air and unverifiable; it may be quite sound, but he feels that he does not know. In the eighteenth century Natural Religion could be taken for granted, as a body of truth which only the irrational would deny; the apologists of the day were engaged in arguing that Revealed Religion is congruent with Natural Religion and therefore is also reasonable. They aimed, as it were, at superimposing Supernatural Religion on a basis of Natural Religion. In our times it is Natural Religion that is called in question, and that seems unconvincing. Men are not certain that it is concerned with actualities at all, or that there is anything which corresponds to the terms used. Since the foundation of Natural Religion is thus shaken, attempts to base on it the fabric of Christian truth are necessarily unsatisfactory. The demonstrations which Natural Religion supplies may seem to be quite plausible, but they do not come home to any one as really settling the matter in dispute, and setting it at rest. They only give the opponents of Christianity an opportunity for displaying their ingenuity in dialectics, like naughty children.

III

Dismissing thus such attempts at blending or co-ordinating scientific and religious truth, we may try to note the fundamental differences between scientific apprehension and religious conviction as intellectual acts. It is enough to say that scientific apprehension occurs through the senses and the intellect; the data of science are particular occurrences in space and time, perceptible to eye and ear and touch, that can be measured and weighed, and in many cases repeated. We need not raise any question as to the reality of the external world, or the reliability of our perceptions; Science rests on the observations of particular senses combined by our intelligence. But religious conviction is of an entirely different order; it has to do with the relation of a human being as a whole to the Universe as a whole. It is not something given by any particular channel, but is a change in the consciousness of self, which gives a different character to all mental and moral activities. Religious conviction arises from the reaction of Self upon a Not-Self, which may be recognized as merely a group of opposing and conflicting forces with which it is hopeless to try and live in complete harmony; this is the

attitude of Fetichism. Or the Not-Self may be regarded as One-so that there is a possibility of entering into definite relations; and as good-a Not-ourselves-that-makes-for-Righteousness. Such conceptions of the Not-Self arise, immediately and directly, in the mind of a man who is not merely conscious of himself as a man, and a lord of creation, but as having defied a Universal Order—and as sinful-or as reconciled to the Universal Order, and as accepted with God. This is the fundamental datum in the Jewish and in the Christian religion; it may be described as felt, or as the awakening of consciousness, but it is certainly not a perception of the senses; it is a conviction as to the relations of the human personality with the totality of things, not the observation of any particular fact. Particular events may be the occasions of awakening it, but they cannot be more. Hence it follows that the phraseology of the senses and the intellect, in which we speak of the apprehensions of Science, are not the best in which to describe the convictions of Religion. We may find it more convenient to speak in terms of Will rather than in those of Intellect. The religious man is conscious of his own Will as opposing the Universal Will-the Will of God-that is the sense of guilt. Or again, he may be conscious of himself as striving to discover the Universal Will, and to bring his own into accordance with it-that is the effort to consecrate his life. But this goes to the root of human nature, and gives a sense of reality that is far deeper than any particular apprehension of colour or sound. So long as man is conscious of himself as a person, so long as he finds himself in a Universe of which he can think as a whole, he is bound to be, in some sense, religious; he is compelled to take account of the relation between the little world, which is constituted by his thinking power and his will, and the great world in which he lives and moves and has his being. Such self-conscious activity has the highest certainty; Descartes found, in the analysis of his self-consciousness a proof of his own existence, and then tried to establish the existence of God as an inference from the element which resulted from his analysis. But the reaction of the human will against the Totality of things is also a fundamental fact in self-consciousness, and carries with it a sense of reality to which no particular external observation, however often repeated, can attain.

IV

So far for the character of Scientific apprehension and of Religious conviction; we must touch very briefly on the progress of each, and here again the differences are noteworthy. The co-ordination of such convictions into a body of religious truth must also be very different from the co-ordinating of particular observations into a body of scientific truth. It is of course true that Religious Conviction-like the other contents of human consciousness-has striven to find expression, partly in the world of action, and partly in literary forms. It does not remain a personal conviction merely, it externalizes itself. Sacrifices and rites and vows are one mode of expression, while another is found in sacred books; and so religious consciousness comes to be uttered in the world of sense, in place and time, it can be the subject of scientific treatment, and there is a Science of Religion. But this Science cannot be precisely similar to other humanistic studies, since the data are less complete. The expression of the religious consciousness is rarely, if ever, adequate; we may not have insight enough to read through the expression to its full religious significance. The widow's gift of two mites was an occurrence in place and time, which could be accurately reported upon by any bystander; but divine insight was needed to appreciate the deep devotion which found expression in that act. So with all the utterances of religion in speech or in act; we need, not merely to get at the precise form of expression, but at the religious content, the value. Ordinary critical methods can take account of the terms of expression or the nature of the act, but its value can only be appreciated from a religious standpoint: spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.

The constant expression of religious consciousness—however inadequate it may be and to whatever misapprehension it may give rise―does give rise to the diffusion of religious opinion and the growth of religious institutions and traditions. There is a heritage of religious thought which is analogous to the heritage of scientific thought-but with a difference. In Science there is an accumulation of fact, a making of many books, and a heaping up of information on many subjects; doubtless a developement of faculty also takes place, but it is not the thing we habitually note,