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of human views of truth. For truth, in reality, is indivisible; its unity is indestructible, as is the unity of God, of Whose essence it -as is the unity of creation,-the universe,-which is its sphere of existence as is the unity of the Church, which is its spiritual expression. In short, by constantly viewing truth in its concrete forms, men acquire the same sort of idea of its nature as they would entertain of light, if its rays were only received upon their visual organs through the medium of a prism. In the latter case they would connect in inseparable association the idea of light with the number and variety of the prismatic tints; light would be to them a set of colours, it would not be what it really is, colourless; they would always think of it in its variety, never in its unity. So in like manner truth becomes to men's minds a series of truths more or less extensive according to the power. and culture of their intellects, but still a series of separate truths always viewed in separation, never in unity. But the case is worse with truth than we can imagine it to be with light. For eye is a perfect organ and does see the whole of light, though we may conceive of its being obliged to receive its rays, not directly, but through a prismatic medium: the eye, in a word, would see every colour of which light consists. But the human mind is not a perfect organ. It not only destroys the unity of truth by regarding it only in its concrete forms, but it destroys its fulness by omitting from its observation portions of the truth. Thus we have theologians, on the one side, advancing the truths of religion as the only truths they will recognize, and philosophers, on the other side, preferring the truths of science as the only truths they can acknowledge.

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The reason for this antagonism between these two concrete forms of truth, the theological and the scientific, iso be sought, it would seem, in the fact that religion preceded science by an immense period of time in the history of human knowledge. The effect of this separation in time was two-fold. The minds most deeply imbued with religious ideas, and most fully devoted to their maintenance and vindication, looked with angry suspicion upon science whenever it touched, even in the slightest way, the domain which they believed to be exclusively their own; and repelled its advances as they would those of a trespasser upon their ancient rights and privileges in the region of thought. The favourers of science, on the other hand, were not free from

1 Of course the writer is not ignorant of the fact that there occurs, in some individuals, a defect of vision called colour-blindness, and that this peculiarity is only known to refer to the red ray in the pencil of light. If the reader be so inclined, he may adopt this physical phenomenon, and use it to point a moral in analogy with the illustration which it has been attempted to draw from the human eye as a perfect organ of sight.

the faults which commonly attach to the explorers of new paths, the propounders of new ideas, the discoverers of new facts; they were arrogant, self-confident, and wanting in proper respect for men and principles who had possession of the field of knowledge long before them. The bias of the one party was to regard truth as something long since known, that of the other to consider it as something yet to be discovered. In the opinion of the one the charm of truth was its antiquity: in the opinion of the other its peculiar fascination was its novelty. These conflicting tendencies pushed their respective partisans into the opposite extremes of irrational assertion. To the one all that was old was true; to the other whatsoever was true must be new which two propositions express the greatest amount of absurdity in the most concise terms; for they contradict, though in exactly opposite ways, the verity that truth is from everlasting as well as to everlasting, never old and never new. This view of the attitude which theologians and philosophers have assumed towards each other, is not a mere fanciful picture. The tone of their writings, the allusions which the one party makes to the opinions and teaching of the other, bear witness to its reality. The open defiance of their respective champions does not more surely mark the origin of the hostility than do the well-meant, but little successful attempts at compromise which have been made by the peacemakers who have from time to time gone forth from either side. The theologico-scientific literature which has grown up around geology, bears upon its face the evidence of the fact that theology and physical science are separated by the distance of ages as to the times of their access to the human mind; and, moreover, it points, by the whole tenor of its reasonings, to that fact as the reason for the hostility which it is intended to allay.

A glance at the scheme and conduct of the warfare between theology and science may help us to understand its nature and its probable issues. The theologian claims to possess truths by revelation: the man of science boasts that he has acquired truth by discovery. They are both right in their respective claims; they are both wrong in their respective denials of each other's claims; and the effect is, that on the surface these two claims have the appearance of being irreconcilable, an appearance which has been given to them by the peculiarly prejudiced state of mind of both parties. We say emphatically that this appearance of irreconcilableness has been given, and we assert that it proceeds from the influence of prejudice, because the day will assuredly arrive, and even now has begun to dawn, when intelligent minds will be struck with amazement that hostility so decided upon grounds so untenable could have been maintained for so long, and with such vigour. The unity and the univer

sality of truth, which is the deeply cherished conviction of all enlightened minds, will, after it has dwelt long enough in human intelligence to germinate and spring up, and bear its precious and abundant fruit, effect such a change in the mutual bearings of theology and science that men will read with curiosity of their contests, and only marvel that it should have been possible to excite a strife which now it seems almost hopeless to quell. They will ask with astonishment, Surely is not the belief in truth, and the love of it, sufficiently powerful to keep men, who investigate its various forms, patient under the hardships of the pursuit, and forbearing towards their fellow-inquirers? Truth comes to man from God in various blessed forms. It descends upon him as an endowment straight from heaven, and reaches his soul through the "still, small voice" of the Holy Spirit: thus he receives it by revelation. It also waits for him

by the wayside of the laborious paths of science, and rewards his patient toil with the knowledge and the service of Nature, whom he has learnt to subdue; and thus he receives it through discovery. But there is another fact, the existence of which is a fruitful source of evil, but will come in time to be looked upon with wonder as a special monstrosity among the many monstrous growths which have sprung from ignorance. That ethics and physical science have real and proper bearings upon each other, no one who knows anything of either will deny; but the perverseness of men who have taken part in the warfare between theology and science has forced them into an unnatural connexion which ought to be a subject of unfeigned astonishment, as well as of regret. Scientific departure from truth is error, moral departure from truth is falsehood; this needs only to be stated to be at once acknowledged; and yet this obvious distinction has been, and even now is, repeatedly lost sight of by angry disputants on either side: one party alleges an error, the other replies as though he were meeting a charge of falsehood. It would be tedious to our readers to conduct them over the field of controversy, and point out the numerous examples of this confusion of ideas. When the history of the war between theology and science comes to be written, the historian will find a large

1 One may, perhaps, be permitted to refer in a note to an instance of this confusion occurring in the writings of so excellent a man as Hugh Miller. He says, that though theologians have at various times striven hard to pledge it [the Bible] to false science, geographical, astronomical, and geological, it has been 'pledged by its Divine Author to no falsehood whatever.' ('Testimony of the 'Rocks,' p. 132.) The impropriety of using the term 'falsehood' in such a connexion must surely be patent to every calm and unbiassed mind. But it is only one of a thousand instances in the works of this and other eminent writers, of the heat of temper generated by the introduction of ethical language into discussions purely scientific.

portion of his task to consist in describing the pitched battles and the desultory skirmishes which have taken place, because imperfect knowledge has been mistaken for moral obliquity. The time, however, has not arrived for writing such a history, though the work has been frequently attempted; but these attempts have only served to swell the list of partisan literature. The warfare is still being waged, and while it lasts there can be no calm resting-place of observation for the historian. Whether it will ever cease no one can be blamed for doubting, and they who think it will end must not be surprised if they be derided as visionary and fanciful. Still, though the fact of antagonism be not done away with, the spirit of the contest is changed, and the change most will allow to be for the better. Men do not now so often rush at the conclusion that when their opponents make an inaccurate statement they are intentionally mendacious; there is not quite so much recklessness in accusing of atheism those whose ideas of the Deity differ either in kind or expression from one's own; and with regard to the treatment of Holy Scripture, there is an abatement of that most wild and pernicious line of defence which may be called the all-or-nothing principle,' because it poises the vast and glorious edifice of revealed truth upon the point of a single incidental statement of some fact, either of history or science, and then declares, with an audacity which makes one shudder, that if that single statement can be disproved, the whole structure must fall to the ground. These, to say the least of them, are cheering signs, and their general effect must be to dispose men's minds to listen to the persuasive and impartial voice of any calm and judicious thinker who may speak out in the interests of peace. Such a voice has been lifted up by the Duke of Argyll, in the volume which now lies before us. Its tendency is decidedly pacific, its tone is temperate, its conclusions are sound, its suggestions are entitled to respect for their manifest sincerity and fairness. The book, in short, is an Eirenicon in the contest between theology and science.

The principal matter of this work has been before the public under different forms for some time, though its materials have only recently been collected within one cover and under one title. Four out of the seven chapters (now expanded with new matter) of which it is comprised, appeared in Good Words in the early half of 1865. The first chapter was originally published in the Edinburgh Review, of October, 1862. The last two chapters formed the substance of Presidential Addresses to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In the opening chapter our author deals with the questions, The Supernatural-What is it? What do we mean by it? 'How do we define it?' and he complains that although these

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questions are of first importance, yet we find them seldom distinctly put, and still more seldom distinctly answered.' And this remark may be extended to almost the whole employment of language in the enunciation of philosophical ideas. Logomachy, after all, was the battle chiefly waged in the schools; and even now that the facilities of the press give the greatest opportunities accuracy, and for the correction of errors in the use of words, it is to be feared that controversy is still as much taken up with disputes about the terms employed as ever. Nature' and 'supernatural' are two expressions very freely used in the discussions which deal with subjects that touch the confines of theology and science; but the freedom with which they are used does not so much betoken the perfect mastery over their significations which their employers possess, as betray the carelessness which springs from ignorance. The students, and even the masters in science, have a rough-and-ready way of treating nature' as a term with elastic boundaries, which can be stretched in any direction that for the time suits their own mental conception of the subject they are engaged about, and which also can be drawn in and narrowed down to the small area of their own observation. The whole region beyond the limits which they thus capriciously appoint to nature,' they, with like caprice, designate as 'supernatural.' Consequently, these two terms, which ought to be most carefully and perspicuously applied in philosophical investigations, come to be treated with strange levity and inconsiderateness. Nature' they are partial to; the supernatural' they do not care for; accordingly we find 'nature' made to stand as an equivalent expression for the space within the horizon of the investigator's own knowledge: it is his world. The supernatural,' on the other hand, is behind the hills' of his knowledge, or at least of his present interests. He uses it as a synonym for the unknown, and even for the unknowable. He casts suspicion upon its existence, and behaves with a scant respect towards its claims to be considered as having weight in settling the boundaries of his favourite 'nature.'

On the other hand, theologians, it must be admitted, are scarcely less partial and irrational in their own use of the words 'nature and supernatural.' They have an unfortunate way of treating 'nature as a sort of impious rival of their favourite 'supernatural.' We say this is unfortunate, because it tinges with a narrow jealousy their whole treatment of scientific questions, and gives to their intercourse with men of science the appearance of unfriendly reserve. Their minds are prepossessed with the notion that the supernatural,' whatever it may mean (for they, no more than the men of science, are clear as to what it does, or ought to, mean), is that which they must defend at all hazards

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