ire program embraced
twenty-four days instead of seventeen.

The first meeting was the Scientific Conference, July 26th to 28th,
aiming both to present science from the Christian point of view, and
Christianity from the scientific point of view, showing the essential
harmony between them, without either subjecting conclusions of science
to church-authority or cutting up the Bible at the behest of the
scientists. There had been frequent battles between the theologians and
the students of nature and the "conflict of science and religion" had
been strongly in evidence, ever since the publication of Darwin's
_Origin of Species_ in 1859. Most pulpits had uttered their thunders
against "Darwinism," even though some of the pulpiteers had never read
Darwin's book, nor could have understood it if they had tried. And many
professors who had never listened to a gospel sermon, and rarely opened
their Bibles, had launched lightnings at the camp of the theologians.
But here was something new; a company of scholars including Dr. R. Ogden
Doremus of New York, Professor A. S. Lattimore of Rochester, Dr.
Alexander Winchell of Michigan, and others of equal standing, on the
same platform with eminent preachers, and no restraint on either side,
each free to utter his convictions, and all certain that the outcome
would be peace and not war.

The writer of these pages was present at most of those lectures, and
remembers one instance showing that the province of science is in the
past and the present and not in the future. Dr. Doremus was giving some
brilliant experiments in the newer developments of electricity. Be it
remembered that it was the year 1876, and in the Centennial Exposition
of that year there was neither an automobile, a trolley-car, nor an
electric light. He said, "I will now show you that remarkable
phenomenon--the electric light. Be careful not to gaze at it too
steadily, for it is apt to dazzle the beholder and may injure the
eyesight." Then as an arc-light of a crude sort flashed and sputtered,
and fell and rose again only to sputter and fall, the lecturer said,
"Of course, the electric light is only an interesting experiment, a sort
of toy to amuse spectators. Every effort to utilize it has failed, and
always will fail. The electric light in all probability will never be of
any practical value."

Yet at that very time, Thomas A. Edison in Menlo Park, New Jersey, was
perfecting his incandescent light, and only three year