there are two fields of intellectual interest: Man and his experiences, and Nature and her processes. There is no more insidious and dangerous temptation than for one who has spent his life in one of these departments of thought to venture into the other department for the purpose of passing judgment upon its facts and conclusions. It is a sad sight to see a physicist come out of his laboratory, with the standards and habits which befit his work, and go up onto that high tableland where the spirit struggles with its mighty problems of destiny, to pass pontifical judgments which only reveal his own limitations. On the other hand the scientist can suffer no more exquisite torture than to hear a theologian, who evidently knows nothing of the care needed to establish even the simplest fact, make sweeping generalizations. Happily from any such exhibition of ignorant presumption you will, I trust, be spared. Upon one phase of the first statement in the will-the mutual bearing of science and religion-I am, perhaps, not entirely incompetent to speak. I have therefore chosen for the theme of this and the two succeeding lectures the theme, Religious Certitude in an Age of Science. Tonight I shall offer some reflections on the Influence of Science on Modern Religious Thought. Tomorrow night the topic will be, The Nature and Truth of Religion. The closing lecture will consider What We Know and What We Believe. Let me state at the outset that I shall not attempt an intricate argument, clothed in unfamiliar words, addressed to the trained minds of experts, to establish some theory of knowledge. The purpose of this foundation, as I understand it, is to persuade the students of the University that they may be unfeignedly loyal to truth in whatever department of research it may be discovered, and at the same time possess the strength and consolation of religion. I am too well aware that I shall satisfy neither the dogmatists of science, nor of religion. The dogmatist is seldom open to argument. Dogmatism, as has been well said, is puppyism grown old. The religious dogmatist is a familiar figure. His iron creed will never open to receive new truth, and the pain of a new idea is intolerable. But religion has no monopoly of this spirit. The narrowest, the most opinionated, the most supercilious persons one finds in our seats of learning are the little scientists, who have sunk so deep into their constricted specialty that they cannot see beyond its confines. They burrow so long in their little mole-runs that their eyes grow dim: they lose all sense of the vastness of the universe; they think the cackle of their laboratory is the murmur of the world. They measure all life with the instruments of their trade. They mistake their generalizations for the philosophy of the universe. A witty writer has recently described those specialists whose minds have become so ossified that they miss the beauty and significance of the world: |