NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13296, 1 October 1906, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. The question, " Are we becoming Jess religious? has been discussed in numerous letters in the London Daily Express lately. One writer gives some interesting information regarding the attitude of modem scientists to religion. He says:—"Since the publication, in 1859, of Darwin's epochmaking work, which, it is alleged, changed the current of human thought, religious as well as scientific, we find such men as Faraday, the greatest experimentalist of modern times ; Brewster, the founder of the British Association ; Adams, the discoverer of the planet Neptune; Sir Richard Owen, the famous anatomist; Sir J. Y. Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform ; Professors Sedgwick and Prestwich, of geological fame; Balfour Stewart, the eminent chemist; Joule, the physicist; Cayley, the mathematician ; Romanes, the biologist; and Sir W. H. Flower, of the South Kensington Museum, each and all avowing themselves to be religious. Science by no means' dissipated, but clarified and intensified, their faith ; they were all earnest ! Christians. Then, as to those who have passed away since the dawn of the present century, who can be named of greater eminence, as mathematician and 'natural philosopher,' than the late Sir George Stokes or Dr. John Gladstone, Professors Tait and Fitzgerald, in their respective departments? They were'intensely religious; they accepted the religion of Jesus. And what of the living? Among the very first in the land stand Lords Kelvin, Rayleigh, and Lister, Sir Robert Ball, Professors Macalister, McKendrick, Bonney, Woodhead, Geikie, Sir Oliver Lodge, and a host of others, who arc not only ' religious,' but as occasion demands, have spoken on behalf of their faith—Christianity. ' It is not true that there is an essential antagonism between the scientific spirit and what is call - ed religious sentiment,' declared Professor E. Ray Lankester, in closing his recent presidential address at York. And the facts here presented clearly point to the same conclusion that as science has advanced, and continues to advance, religious sentiment and religious belief have not, and will not, decline, but will become—notwithstanding certain appearances— real and pronounced."