Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays

The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary according to the knowledge and the in...

How far Jesus positively sanctioned all these indrainings of circumjacent Paganism into Judaism; how far any one has a right to declare, that the refusal to accept one or other...

Without going beyond the range of fair scientific analogy, conditions are easily conceivable which should render the loss of heat far more rapid than it is at present; and such...

That I should be reproved for rapidity of judgment is very just; however quaint the situation of Mr. Gladstone, as the reprover, may seem to people blessed with a sense of humou...

"For close upon forty years I have been writing with one purpose; from time to time, I have fought for that which seemed to me the truth, perhaps still more, against that which...

The Duke of Argyll, in telling the story of _Bathybius_, says that my mind was "caught by this new and grand generalisation of the physical basis of life." I never have been gui...

Perhaps, however, it may be well for me to observe that approbation of the manner in which a great biblical scholar, for instance, Reuss, does his work does not commit me to the...

According to my reading of the best authorities upon the history of science, Newton discovered neither gravitation, nor the law of gravitation; nor did he pretend to offer more...

Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the assumption that, amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through endless space, there can be no intellig...

[15] There is no exaggeration in this brief and summary view of the Catholic cosmos. But it would be unfair to leave it to be supposed that the Reformation made any essential al...

Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world would agree in reciprocating that appellation to Dr. Wace himself. I once visited the Hazar Mosque, the great University of Mohamme...

[105] If William the Conqueror, after fighting the battle of Hastings, had marched to capture Chichester and then returned to assault Rye, being all the while anxious to reach L...

I have been living very much out of the world for the last two or three years, and when I read this denunciatory outburst, as of one filled with the spirit of prophecy, I said t...

... On the lowest grounds on which our Lord and His Apostles can be placed they must, at least, be regarded as _honest_ men. Now, though honest speech does not require that word...

Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives, I was anxious to get rid of the common assumption that the determination of the authorship and of the dates of t...

Whatever points of detail may yet remain open for discussion, however, I repeat the opinion I have already expressed, that the Manchester sermons concede all that science, has a...

The practical interest is this: if you do not believe in these miracles recounted by a witness whose character and competency are firmly established, whose sincerity cannot be d...

Undoubtedly, if the operation is stated in its most general form; if it is to be supposed that a certain quantity, or magnitude, was divided into many more parts than the whole...

The enumeration of all these iniquities, in oratorical style, takes up a whole octavo page; and at the end it is stated, "All these things the demon spoke in Latin by the mouth...

I did not write this paragraph without a knowledge that its sense would be open to the kind of perversion which it has suffered; but, if that was clear, the necessity for the st...

My recollections of this time have recently been revived by the perusal of a remarkable document,[9] signed by as many as thirty-eight out of the twenty odd thousand clergymen o...

These are the facts of the case as stated by the oldest extant narrative of them. I do not see why any one should have a word to say against the inherent probability of that nar...

History also tells us that the field of the supernatural has rewarded its cultivators with a harvest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a different character. It has produced a...

But neither _per se_ nor _per aliud_ has agnosticism (if I know anything about it) the least pretension to be a religious philosophy; so far from resting on ignorance of history...

Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judgment of the limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have been confined. Ecclesiastical authority...

"Consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the...

VI. Suppose that, A standing for the _threefold tradition_, or the matter common to all three Gospels; we call the matter common to "Mark" and "Matthew" only--B; that common to...

So far from setting aside the authority of the synoptics on "subjective" grounds, I have taken a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief in the story is based upon what...

"The earlier chapters describing glacial action, and the traces of it in North America--especially the defining of its limits, such as the terminal moraine of the great movement...