shown to be not disprovable by scientific knowledge, but
whether it is supported thereby.

There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. Reville but
what rather tends to confirm than to impair the old-fashioned
belief that there is a revelation in the book of Genesis
(p. 694).

The form into which Mr. Gladstone has thought fit to throw this opinion
leaves me in doubt as to its substance. I do not understand how a
hostile criticism can, under any circumstances, tend to confirm that
which it attacks. If, however, Mr. Gladstone merely means to express his
personal impression, "as one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge
which carries authority," that he has destroyed the value of these
criticisms, I have neither the wish nor the right to attempt to disturb
his faith. On the other hand, I may be permitted to state my own
conviction, that, so far as natural science is involved, M. Reville's
observations retain the exact value they possessed before Mr. Gladstone
attacked them.

Trusting that I have now said enough to secure the author of a wise and
moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom
and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure of justice than
has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from my self-appointed
championship, with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called upon by
M. Reville to apologise for damage done to his strong case by imperfect
or impulsive advocacy. But, perhaps, I may be permitted to add a word
or two, on my own account, in reference to the great question of the
relations between science and religion; since it is one about which I
have thought a good deal ever since I have been able to think at all;
and about which I have ventured to express my views publicly, more than
once, in the course of the last thirty years.

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so
much, appears to me to be purely factitious--fabricated, on the one
hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch
of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally
short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for
its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual
comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they
must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance.

It seems to me that the moral and intellectual life of the civilised
nations of Euro