The God of science is perhaps more in agreement with the biblical God than the God of dogmatic theology. The interpretations of biblical passages which are at present generally considered as orthodox are (merely from the standpoint of impartial exegetics) untenable. The first chapter of Genesis has not one word about special-creation acts. Neither the Elohim nor the Jahveh-Adonai account declares that in the beginning there had been Nothing. Both accounts (Gen. Chap. I. 1 to II. 3, and II. 3 et seqq.) agree that God “shaped” the world. The word _barah_ (to shape, to form, to make) is nowhere used in the sense of creating out of nothing. The Psalmist says, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,” which was so interpreted in the New Testament that it meant “by the logos,” and the gospel of St. John adds καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, i. e. and the word was God. Logos means rational speech or reason, and the world-reason through which the heavens were made can mean only the cosmic order of the universe. This idea of St. John’s thought out to its ultimate conclusions means monism. There is a common error that scientific progress is dangerous to religion. Scientific progress is dangerous to superstition only. Religion (i. e. true religion) is not based upon our ignorance, but upon our knowledge; it is not a child of the darkness but of the light, and faith far from being a mere belief, i. e. the imperfect knowledge of an opinion for which no proof is forthcoming, is applied knowledge, it is knowledge plus the confidence that this knowledge can be made the basis of ethics and the supreme rule for regulating our conduct in life. The history of religion has been and is still a constant purification of our religious ideas, and the crucible in which the religious ideas are purified is science. We are slowly but constantly progressing toward a high religious ideal and this ideal is a cosmical religion free from the pagan notions so severely criticised by Christ and yet so carefully preserved by the Christian churches. This cosmical religion will be the religion of science. It will not consist of religious indifference nor of a toleration of any and every opinion as is so often erroneously proclaimed as the ideal of liberalism. On the contrary it will be in a certain sense the most orthodox religion, for its maxim will be to stand on the truth and nothing but the truth. And the truth is not at all indifferent or tolerant. The truth is extremely intolerant and suffers no error beside it, although, as a matter of course, the truth is very tolerant in so far as it sanctions no violence but employs only the spiritual sword of conviction by argument and logical proof.