“We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research has shown to be the scientific truth—i.e., we find in them statements which modern science proves to be erroneous.” At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J.G. Richardson said of the Old Testament that “it was no longer honest or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given—so the Church had always taught, and would always teach—under the inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it contained passages of narrative which devout and temperate men pronounced discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the teaching of Christ and the conscience of the Christian alike condemned.” Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that “the teaching of Christ” has been modified, enlarged, widened, and humanised, and that “the conscience of the Christian” is in quantity and quality made fitter for human progress by the ever increasing additions of knowledge of these later and more heretical days. SUPERNATURAL AND RATIONAL MORALITY THE essential of all religion is supernaturalism, and every religious system therefore involves at least dualism; as creator and created, ruler and ruled. This definition would, of course, exclude Pantheism from consideration as a religion. Supernaturalism is for a rationalist a word of self-contradiction. Nature to him means all phenomena, and all that is necessary to the happening of every phenomenon; that is, nature is the equivalent of everything. To the rationalist there can be nothing supernatural. He is a Monist. There is, he affirms, one existence; he knows only its phenomena. These phenomena he distinguishes in thought by their varying characteristics. To the rationalist the word “create” in the sense of absolute origin of substance is a word without meaning. He cannot think totality of existence increased or non-existent. “Substance,” “existence,” “matter,” is to him the totality: known, and, as far as he can yet think, knowable only in its phenomena.