gain and again, as human thought changes and human
science develops; for if in any age or country the God who seems to
be revealed by Nature seems different from the God who is revealed
by the then popular religion, then that God, and the religion which
tells of that God, will gradually cease to be believed in.

For the demands of Reason (as none knew better than good Bishop
Butler) must be and ought to be satisfied. And when a popular war
arises between the reason of a generation and its theology, it
behoves the ministers of religion to inquire, with all humility and
godly fear, on which side lies the fault: whether the theology
which they expound is all that it should be, or whether the reason
of those who impugn it is all that it should be.

For me, as (I trust) an orthodox priest of the Church of England, I
believe the theology of the National Church of England, as by law
established, to be eminently rational as well as scriptural. It is
not, therefore, surprising to me that the clergy of the Church of
England, since the foundation of the Royal Society in the
seventeenth century, have done more for sound physical science than
the clergy of any other denomination; or that the three greatest
natural theologians with which I, at least, am acquainted--Berkeley,
Butler, and Paley--should have belonged to our Church. I am not
unaware of what the Germans of the eighteenth century have done. I
consider Goethe's claims to have advanced natural theology very much
over-rated: but I do recommend to young clergymen Herder's
"Outlines of the Philosophy of the History of Man" as a book (in
spite of certain defects) full of sound and precious wisdom. But it
seems to me that English natural theology in the eighteenth century
stood more secure than that of any other nation, on the foundation
which Berkeley, Butler, and Paley had laid; and that if our orthodox
thinkers for the last hundred years had followed steadily in their
steps, we should not be deploring now a wide, and as some think
increasing, divorce between Science and Christianity.

But it was not so to be. The impulse given by Wesley and Whitfield
turned (and not before it was needed) the earnest mind of England
almost exclusively to questions of personal religion; and that
impulse, under many unexpected forms, has continued ever since. I
only state the fact--I do not deplore it; God forbid! Wisdom is
justified of all her children, and as, according to the wise