LECTURE ON "THE THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE" AT SION COLLEGE-DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS-EXPEDITIONS OF THE CHESTER NATURAL SCIENCE SOCIETY-LECTURES ON TOWN GEOLOGY-A LUMP OF COAL-THRIFT DISTRIBUTION-LA PETITE CULTURE-THE TRAINING OF LANDLORDS--THE FRENCH PEASANTRY-PEASANT PROPRIETORS-RACE WEEK AT CHESTERLETTERS ON BETTING-CAMP AT BRAMSHILL-THE PRINCE OF WALES IN EVERSLEY-PRINCE OF WALES'S ILLNESS-SERMON ON LOYALTY AND SANITARY SCIENCE-LECTURE TO ROYAL ARTILLERY OFFICERS AT WOOLWICH -LETTER FROM COLONEL STRANGE, R.A.

"To conclude, therefore, let no man, out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an illapplied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy, but rather let men endeavour at endless progress or proficience in both.” BACON, ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.

CHAPTER XXVII.

IN January he gave a lecture by request at Sion College. The subject he chose was "The Theology of the Future," in which he urged on the clergy the necessity of facing the great scientific facts of the day, and asserted his own belief in final causes.

"I wish to speak," he says, "not on natural religion, but on natural theology. By the first I understand what can be learnt from the physical universe of man's duty to God and his neighbour; by the latter I understand what can be learned concerning God Himself. Of natural religion I shall say nothing. I do not even affirm that a natural religion is possible; but I do very earnestly believe that a natural theology is possible; and I earnestly believe also that it is most important that natural theology should, in every age, keep pace with doctrinal or ecclesiastical theology. . . .

He goes on to speak of Bishop Butler, Berkeley, and Paley, the three greatest of our natural theologians, and of the strong fact, that the clergy of the Church of England, since the foundation of the Royal Society in the 17th century, have done more for sound physical science than the clergy of any other denomination; and expresses his belief that if our orthodox thinkers for the last hundred years had followed steadily in their steps, we should not now be deploring the wide and, as some think, widening gulf between science and Christianity. He considers Goethe's claims to have advanced natural theology as very much over-rated, but strongly recommends to the younger clergy

This lecture, or rather part of it, is incorporated into the preface of his "Westminster Sermons,” published in 1874.

"Herder's Outlines of the Philosophy of the History of Man" as a book, in spite of certain defects, full of sound and precious wisdom.

He speaks of certain popular hymns of the present day as proofs of an unhealthy view of the natural world, with a savour hanging about them of the old monastic theory of the earth being the devil's planet instead of God's, and gives characteristic instances, contrasting their key-note with that of the 104th, 147th, and 148th Psalms, and the noble Benedicite Omnia Opera of our Prayer-book. Again, he contrasts the Scriptural doctrine about the earth being cursed with the popular fancies on the same point. He speaks of the 139th Psalm as a "marvellous essay on natural theology," and of its pointing to the important study of embryology, which is now occupying the attention of Owen, Huxley, and Darwin. Then he goes on to "Race," and "the painful and tremendous facts" which it involves, which must all be faced; believing himself that here, as elsewhere, Science and Scripture will be ultimately found to coincide. He presses the study of Darwin's Fertilisation of Orchids (whether his main theory be true or not) as a most valuable addition to natural theology. Then, after an eloquent protest against the "child-dream of a dead universe governed by an absent God," which Carlyle and even Goethe have “treated with noble scorn," he speaks of that 'nameless, invisible, imponderable," yet seeming omnipresent, thing which scientific men are finding below all phenomena, which the scalpel and the microscope can show-the life which shapes and makes-that "unknown and truly miraculous element in nature, the mystery of which for ever engrossing, as it does, the noblest minded of our students of science, is yet for ever escaping them while they cannot escape it." He calls on the clergy to have courage to tell them-what will sanctify, while it need never hamper, their investigations-that this perpetual and omnipresent miracle is no other than the Breath of God: The Spirit who is The Lord, and The Giver of Life. "Let us only wait," he says—“ let us observe-let us have patience and faith. Nominalisın, and that 'sensationalism' which has sprung from Nominalism, are running fast to seed; Comtism seems to me its supreme effort, after which the whirligig of Time may

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bring round its revenges; and Realism, and we who hold the Realist creeds, may have our turn."

"I sometimes dream," he adds, " of a day when it will be considered necessary that every candidate for ordination should be required to have passed creditably in at least one branch of physical science, if it be only to teach him the method of sound scientific thought. And if it be said that the doctrine of evolution, by doing away with the theory of creation, does away with that of final causes-let us answer boldly, Not in the least. We might accept what Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley have written on physical science, and yet preserve our natural theology on exactly the same basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should have to develop it, I do not deny. That we should have to relinquish it, I do."

Extracts give a poor conception of the lecture, which made a profound impression, and, as private letters showed, gave hope and comfort to many among those who heard it delivered, or read it afterwards in the pages of "Macmillan's Magazine;" and reprinting it, as he did, only a year before his death, it may be looked on as his last words on his favourite topic, and a last confession of his faith that, If the clergy would only play the great "rôle" which is before them, science and the creeds would one day shake hands.

Scientific subjects, and especially the distribution of plants, occupied him much at this time, and the success of his botanical class at Chester the previous year, decided him to follow it up with geology. He was busy, too, with the proofs of his West India book "At Last."

He writes to Sir Charles Bunbury:

"I have not seen Sir Charles Lyell's 'Students' Elements of Geology;' but I can believe all the good of it which you report. I shall need it for a geological class, which I intend to start at Chester among middle-class young men, as I started a botany class last year. Neither have I yet seen Hooker's new book.

"But how interesting are the last Transactions of the ‘Linnæan.' "The verification of the frankincense trees, on the very shores where the ancients said that they grew, is a fresh hint to us to believe that men of old were not always the inaccurate dreamers which we have been too apt to consider them. But the fact of the year is