realm of music, and even the nerve of religious sensation, can be atrophied by neglect. "There is a little flower in the garden of the soul named reverence," said Oliver Wendel Holmes, "and I find it must be watered at least once a week." What Mr. Darwin's example proves, is the peril of neglecting any of the faculties of the soul and that the nerve of religious sensation must be taken care of, nourished, and cultivated. That One whose name is above every name, once likened Himself to a vine-the vine of life, the vine whose leaves heal wounds, the wounds of the nations, but He indicated that even that divine vine has to be watered, pruned, and taken care of, for He added, "My Father is the Husbandman" toiling in the vineyard. The real lesson of Darwin's life, therefore, is not that belief in evolution reacts upon and destroys religious faith-the real lesson of his unhappy old age is this: at all costs and hazards guard the integrity of the spiritual optic nerve; nourish and develop by exercise the faculty of religious sensation. He who by sin cuts a bloody gash in that nerve will soon come to blindness, and think that there is no longer a God in the sky.

THE BIBLE NOT A BOOK OF SCIENCE1

How, then, can we reconcile the first chapter of Genesis with modern science and evolution? We simply do not try to reconcile them. A moment's thought will convince us that there were, as we have seen, two possible methods open if there was to be a divine revelation to man. One would be a perfect, final, infallible compendium of universal knowledge let down from heaven in a finished and perfect book. But supposing such a book were written in terms of modern science, about electrons, relativity, radium, the nebular hypothesis, etc. Of what possible moral and spiritual use would it have been to

1 By Sherwood Eddy in the pamphlet, Science and Religion.

men during the last five thousand years, or in any age? It would have been incomprehensible and impractical. Even if it were written in terms of modern twentieth century science it would be out of date in a few years, not necessarily because it would be untrue, but inadequate.

If, on the other hand, man must learn by gradual progress in education and discipline, the only other alternative to the above would seem to be that of a gradual, progressive revelation on the principle "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." If we turn to the first chapter of the Bible we read: "In the beginning-God!" More than thirty times in this chapter God is referred to as the author of all. Here is the divinely inspired spiritual truth that it is God's world. and that in it He has a purpose of good. Then we read on through that opening poem containing a beautiful picture of a world described as created in six days, each with its evening and morning. As we contrast this statement with those of certain other sacred books describing the world as hatched out of a golden egg, in seven round continents and seven concentric seas of milk, melted butter, etc., we see the simple grandeur of the Biblical narrative. But in no sense is it scientific and by no conceivable stretch of the imagination can it truly be made so. The Bible is a marvelous book of poetry, prose, history, geography, cosmogony and a hundred other things, but for none of these things was it written. Its one central purpose was that believing, we might have life; to so reveal God to man in a revelation culminating in Jesus. Christ, that we might have life in Him. To force it to do duty as science, history, geography, astronomy, geology, etc., is to repeat the catastrophe of those who have opposed science by Scripture from the days of Augustine to the present.

Let us, therefore, gladly receive the revelation of God's truth equally in His word and in His world, in

religion and in science. We shall find one vast, mighty, majestic process culminating in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the Kingdom of God as a new social order. Thus through all the ages one increasing purpose runs, and love is found creation's final law. Thus like the author of the Hebrews, "receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken," we accept God's truth through the gradual, developing, evolutionary revelation of Himself in religion and science alike.

JOINT STATEMENT UPON THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION, BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND SCIENTISTS'

We, the undersigned, deeply regret that in recent controversies there has been a tendency to present science and religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of thought, for in fact they meet distinct human needs, and in the rounding out of human life they supplement rather than displace or oppose each other.

The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the laws and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. Each of these two activities represents a deep and vital function of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the life, the progress, and the happiness of the human race.

It is a sublime conception of God which is furnished by science, and one wholly consonant with the highest ideals of religion, when it represents Him as revealing Himself through countless ages in the development of the earth as an abode for man and in the age-long

1 Prepared by Dr. Robert A. Millikan, director of the Norman_Bridge Laboratory of Physics, Pasadena, Cal. The statement appeared in Science. n.s. 57: 630-1. June 1, 1923. Also in Review of Reviews. 68: 88-9. July, 1923.

inbreathing of life into its constituent matter, culminating in man with his spiritual nature and all his God-like powers.

Partial list of signers. Scientists: Charles D. Walcott, geologist, president of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and head of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington; Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist, president of the American Museum of Natural History, New York; Edwin Grant Conklin, zoologist, head of the department of Zoology, Princeton University; James Rowland Angell, psychologist, president of Yale University; John Merle Coulter, botanist, head of the department of Botany, University of Chicago; Michael I. Pupin, physicist and engineer, professor of Electromechanics and director of Phoenix Research Laboratory, Columbia University; William James Mayo, surgeon, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, Rochester, Minnesota; William Wallace Campbell, astronomer, director of Lick Observatory and president-elect of the University of California; Robert A. Millikan, physicist, director of Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics, Pasadena, California; William Henry Welch, pathologist, director of the School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; John C. Merriam, paleontologist, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Religious leaders: Bishop William Lawrence, Episcopalian, Bishop of Massachusetts, Boston; Bishop William Thomas Manning, Episcopalian, New York City; Bishop Joseph H. Johnson, Episcopalian, Bishop of Los Angeles, California; Dr. Henry van Dyke, Presbyterian, preacher and poet, Princeton, New Jersey; President James Gore King McClure, Presbyterian, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago; President Clarence A. Barbour, Baptist, Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, New York; President Ernest D. Burton, Baptist theologian,

University of Chicago; President Henry Churchill King, Congregationalist, Oberlin Graduate School of Theology, Oberlin, Ohio; Bishop Francis John McConnell, Methodist, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE ON

1

CHRISTIANITY 1

God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."-JOHN 4:24.

It is a commonplace that all religions, even though their formularies and sacred books seem to guarantee absence of change, are constantly modified. Unless religion is moribund, it is dynamic and not static. It is a living process within the spirit of man; and, as such, it is profoundly affected by the ideas and emotions of the community in which it exists. Religious thought and feeling alike are influenced, for good or ill, by contemporary political, social and intellectual movements. In the domain of politics, for instance. Christianity was, in medieval times, held to justify the claim of ecclesiastics to control secular princes. Subsequently it was regarded as a bulwark of the divine right of kings. Some now believe it to sanction the divine right of democracy. It would be easy to collect many such examples of the way in which Christianity has taken color from its environment. Notoriously, in the domain of ethics, it has sometimes been disastrously affected by the spirit of the age. There have thus resulted bewildering paradoxes in which cynics, like Gibbon, have rejoiced.

But today I would emphasize the gain to Christianity which has come from secular progress external to itself. In the second century of the Christian era there was pronounced ethical progress in the Roman Empire. In part, doubtless, this was due to the rise of Christianity; but

1 By Ernest William Barnes, Sc.D., F.R.S. Canon of Westminster Abbey, London. Sermon preached in Liverpool Cathedral in connection with the meeting of the British Association. Christian Work. 116: 12-14. January 5, 1924.