'In fact we may almost say that the obstacles to belief on the side of science were gone when once it was admitted that God Who has revealed to us His nature and ours, and made this revelation in part through an historical process and in the literature of a nation, has yet, and for obvious reasons, given us no revelation at all on matters which fall within the domain of scientific research. 'A similar removal of obstacles must be claimed in the region of historical criticism. There, again, it has become apparent that, whatever turns out true about this or that Old Testament narrative, no question really vital to the Christian religion can be said to be at stake in this field; while in the region of the New Testament the most sifting criticism has had a result emphatically reassuring. The critical evidence justifies, or more than justifies, the belief of the Church which is expressed in her Creeds.' But this has been a hard-won fight for most-- 'Friends, companions, and train The avalanche swept from our side,'[20] and no one felt the strain, the positive agony of soul, in greater degree than did George Romanes. Step by step he abandoned the position he had maintained in his Burney Prize, with no great pauses, rather, as it seems, with startling rapidity, and with sad and with reluctant backward glances he took up a position of agnosticism, for a time almost of materialism. He wrote a book, published in 1876, which was entitled 'A Candid Examination of Theism.' It is almost needless to discuss the work, as it has been dealt with by its author in his posthumous 'Thoughts on Religion.' It is an able piece of work, and is marked throughout by a lofty spirit, a profound sadness, and a belief (which years after he criticised sharply) in the exclusive light of the scientific method in the Court of Reason. His education had been on strictly scientific lines, and the limitations of thought produced by such education are clearly seen in that essay; 'limitations' which the philosophical and the metaphysical tendencies of his mind soon led him to overstep. The reaction against the conclusions of the essay set in far sooner than has been at all suspected. Perhaps the first published mark of reaction is the Rede Lecture[21] of 1885. Yet anyone who reads carefully the conclusion of the 'Candid Examination'[22] will see the note of 'longing and thirsting for God.'