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 meaning of the Bible has gained, and it was intended that it should gain, by the increase of other knowledge. Science makes clearer than anything else could have made it the higher level on which the Bible puts what is spiritual over what is material. I do not hesitate to ascribe to Science a clearer knowledge of the true interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, and to scientific history a truer knowledge of the great historical prophets. The advance of secular studies, as they are called, clears up much in the Psalms, and much in the other poetical Books of Scripture. I cannot doubt that this was intended from the beginning, and that as Science has already done genuine service to Religion in this way, so will it do still better service with process of time.