onde des Plantes avant L'Apparition de
L'Homme, p. 109.

[13] H. Faye: Sur L'Origine du Monde, Chapitre XI, p. 256-7.

[14] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, p. 112.

[15] Eduard von Hartmann: Ausgewaehlte Werke, viii, pp. 572-3 (Leipzig,
1904).

[16] Joseph McCabe: The End of the World, pp. 116-117.

[17] Herbert Spencer: Illustrations of Universal Progress, Chapter I,
Progress: Its Law and Cause, p. 58; Social Statics, Part I, Chapter II,
The Evanescence of Evil, Sec. 4, p. 78 ff.

[18] Louis Bertrand: Saint Augustin, p. 342.

LECTURE II

THE NEED FOR RELIGION

I

One of the first effects of the idea of progress, whose development our
last lecture traced, has been to increase immeasurably man's self
reliance and to make him confident of humanity's power to take care of
itself. At the heart of the idea of progress is man's new scientific
control over life, and this new mastery, whereby the world seems ready
to serve the purposes of those who will learn the laws, is the dominant
influence in both the intellectual and practical activities of our age.
That religion, in consequence, should seem to many of minor import, if
not quite negligible, and that men, trusting themselves, their
knowledge of law, their use of law-abiding forces, their power to
produce change and to improve conditions, should find less need of
trusting any one except themselves, was inevitable, but for all that it
is fallacious. Already we have seen that a stumbling and uneven
progress, precarious and easily frustrated, taking place upon a
transient planet, goes but a little way to meet those elemental human
needs with which religious faith has dealt. In our present lecture we
propose a more specific consideration of this abiding necessity of
religion in a progressive world.

How difficult it is to go back in imagination to the days before men
grasped the meaning of natural law! We take gravitation for granted
but, when Newton first proclaimed its law, the artillery of orthodox
pulpits was leveled against him in angry consternation. Said one
preacher, Newton "took from God that direct action on his works so
constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material
mechanism" and he "substituted gravitation for Providence." [1] That
preacher saw truly that the discovery of natural law was going to make
a profound difference to religion. For ages men had been accustomed to
look for the revelation of supernatura