itself was gone unless their interpretation of it was upheld. And the
mischief is double. For many believers, and more especially unlearned
believers, instead of gently helping one another to form the necessary
modification of their view of the Bible teaching, instead of
endeavouring to find the way out of the perplexity and to disentangle
the true spiritual lesson from the accessories which are no part of
itself, insisted that it must be all or nothing, and prepared for
themselves a very severe trial. There was no doctrine involved whatever;
there was nothing at stake on which the spiritual life depended. The
duty to be patient, to enquire carefully, to study the other side, to
wait for light, was as plain as any duty could be. But all this was
forgotten in a somewhat unreasoning impulse to resist an assault on the
faith. And there cannot be a doubt that on all these occasions many
believers have been seriously shaken by slowly finding out that the
position they have taken is untenable. When men have to give up in such
circumstances they generally give up far more than they need, and in
some cases an unreasonable resistance has been followed by an equally
unreasonable surrender. And while believers have thus prepared a
stumblingblock for themselves they have put quite as great a
stumblingblock before others. For students of Science, informed by
instant voices all around that they must choose between their Science
and the Bible, knowing as they did that their Science was true, and
supposing that the lovers and defenders of the Bible best knew what its
teaching was, had no choice as honest men but to hold the truth as far
as they possessed it and to give up the Bible in order to maintain their
Science. It was a grievous injury inflicted on them; and though some
among them might deserve no sympathy, there were some whom it was a
great loss to lose.

But in the third place, the result of this clinging to externals is to
shut out Science and all its correlative branches of knowledge from
their proper office of making perpetually clearer the true and full
meaning of the Revelation itself. It is intended that Religion should
use the aid of Science in clearing her own conceptions. It is intended
that as men advance in knowledge of God's works and in power of handling
that knowledge, they should find themselves better able to interpret the
message which they have received from their Father in Heaven. Our
knowledge of the true