SUN AND SAINTS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 122, 20 November 1922, Page 7

SUN AND SAINTS

THE SPIRIT OF SCIENCE

Men of science ought more frequently to associate themselves with religion, so that a true liturgy may arise from the laboratory, and the study may become a shrine.". That was the message of the Archbishop of York, Dr. Cosmo Gordon Lang, to the. scientists of England in the sermon which he preached before the president and members of the British Association in Holy Trinity Church'recently, says the Daily Mail." "The age of conflict between science and religion has passed," he said- "Such conflict as exists is chiefly waged by noisy and ignorant camp-fnl-lowefs of theology and science and not by representative leaders.

"Truth is many-sided, and theology and science alike are its servants. The true relationship between theology and science is neither one of conflict nor of respectful separation. It is ons of comradeship. Philosophy is the mutual friend 'who helps them, to understand each othor and to live and work together." Students of science and of religion wera at one as'fellow-learners of God (he continued). It would be strange indeed to treat the experience of matter and motion or even of organic life as of supreme interest and dismiss the experience of religion as a mere illusion, as some meaningless and purposeless eccentricity of nature. Our knowledge of the various orders of reality—physical, chemical, biological, and spiritual—was never absolute but only relative. We could not claim to interpret all the orders of reality by the standards proper to one. Science and religion were alike concerned in (their distinctive orders and experience with the revelation of reality, by the creative. mind of the universe. • ■

<.-P? an t g0 ' Preaci»ng from the text, ™ } consider the Heavens, the work of lhy fingers, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?" said the tendency to worship the sun and stars was widespread and easy to understand, but could we suppose the Creator set more store by an enormous gas bag than the spirit 'of- a saint ?

It was a characteristic tendency of industrial civilisation to think of everything in terms of ownership, but was it a valid •argument for. Theism to ask Whether so eligible a property a 8 the universe could possibly belong to nobody? Did we ever unconsciously argus that as we bowed respectfully to a duke who owjed 100 000 acres we ought to pay infinitely greater respect to the largest of landed proprieto«, possessing a million estates eaoh a million miles in diameter, and whose title deeds were millions of years old? Indian thought had never been impressed by this idea of ownership, and American writers were beginning- fo talk of ' the democratic idea of God," meaning apparently that He is a spirit among other spirits, but has rather less power than the President of the United States. The scientific view of the world had much more to teaoh us than some of itfi critics were willing to admit. "Natural science is," he said, "the principal vehicle of revelation to ut in the twentieth century. It has modified ourVwhole way of looking at things. The idea of evolution has transformed our outlook in dealing with almost every subject, including history, politics, and theology." The scientific temper was as great an asset to humanity as scientific discovery. Nowhere els© did' they find such disinterested devotion to truth, such unquenchable fftilh in the power and value of disciplined intellectual labour, such told sweep of imagination checked by such punctiliously accurate experiment. The air breathed by science was lileo that of mountain heights—thin, but pyro and bracing. Science had affected both theology and morality in many wayi>, and must, affect them further. The oducnted Christian had fittod his creed within the framework of tho.universe as we know it to he, and as the people, more especially women, became better educated, there would bo less rosistnncp to a reconstruction of that part of the building which is obviously crumbling. When chin noecMivry work w»» done ieligion would not be ft pig ti» w_OX».