'IS THEEE A BELIGION 
 OF NATURE?'
 
 LECTURES GIVEN IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 
 JANUARY 1902 
 
 BY 
 
 P. N. WAGGETT, M.A. 
 
 SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST 
 
 PUBLISHED XJNDEK THE DIRECTION OF THE TEACT COMMITTEE 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.O. J 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, B.C. 
 
 BRIGHTON : 129, NORTH STREET. 
 
 NEW YORK: B. & J. B. YOUNG to CO. 
 
 1902
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE reports, kindly furnished by Mr. G. 
 E. Hall, are printed in accordance with the 
 wishes of some who heard the lectures, and 
 they are printed with the least possible 
 alteration or addition of words. The tempta- 
 tion to remove repetitions and to strengthen 
 the fabric of the argument has been rejected. 
 In justice to the reader it must be added 
 that I consider a man's responsibility for 
 details is less strict in a case like this than 
 it is with regard to his own written com- 
 position deliberately corrected. 
 
 The lectures were given last January, at 
 the invitation of the Society of St. Paul ; the 
 first and last in the crypt-chapel of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, the second at St. Martin's, Ludgate 
 Hill. 
 
 P. N. W. 
 
 13 Dartmouth Street, Westminster 
 April 1902.
 
 The word ' Naturalist' is used all through these lectures 
 not to indicate one who studies natural history, but one 
 who holds the general view of the world which has 
 been called 'Naturalism.' See pp. 10, 38. 
 
 The expression ' Religion of Nature ' in the title is 
 intended to refer to Naturalism when proposed as a 
 substitute for Religion in the hitherto accepted sense.
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE CONTRAST BETWEEN RELIGION AND RELIGION- 
 OF- NATURE, OR FAITH AND PRACTICAL 
 NATURALISM
 
 'IS THEEE A RELIGION 
 OF NATURE?' 
 
 WHEN I was asked to give this lecture, I 
 thought it might be useful to speak of some 
 special theories of nature and man, from the 
 point of view of natural science ; but I do not 
 think so now. If I speak of anything of a 
 technical character, it will only be by way of 
 illustrating what is of universal and permanent 
 truth, and of practical importance. It is not 
 wise to speak about recent contributions to 
 theory for this reason : that there are some in 
 this audience who know them very well, and 
 some who do not know them at all. Those 
 who do not know them at all might be 
 kept through the whole lecture in wonder 
 what the lecture is about ; and those who know 
 them very well might be occupied in thinking 
 how much better they could themselves state
 
 10 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE?' 
 
 the technical points. For in the short time at 
 our disposal one could do but little with regard 
 to positive matters of statement, especially for 
 those who do not agree with one beforehand. 
 So I am only going to speak of the general 
 tendency which always, I suppose, exists in 
 human nature the tendency to think that we 
 might get on better if our religion were what 
 is roughly called more natural. 
 
 The word ' natural ' suggests, at the outset, 
 a useful expression which has lately come into 
 currency, an expression far better for our 
 purpose than either ' Science ' or ' Nature ' ; 
 I mean the word, ' Naturalism/ This word, 
 first, I think, used in our sense by Mr. Balfour, 
 has come to be accepted as the name of a 
 state of mind and of theory which, although 
 it may not be fully consistent with itself, 
 is nevertheless quite distinguishable from 
 other states of mind. For a state of mind 
 may be distinguishable, though it is not dis- 
 tinct. It can be a real state of mind which 
 we are able to recognise, although it is not 
 able to justify itself in full. Even Religion 
 itself is such a condition. In none of us 
 is Religion a fully thought-out conception of 
 life, any more than it is a fully worked-out
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 11 
 
 government of life ; but nevertheless the state 
 of religion, the condition of a believing man, 
 is a recognisable state in spite of its inconsist- 
 ency with itself. Naturalism then, in its 
 general notion, is a distinguishable state. 
 Mainly it is this : the claim that what goes 
 roughly by the name of nature that which is 
 the subject of investigation by natural science 
 will give us all that we want, and that we 
 ought not to go outside of this ; and that, 
 when we attempt to go outside of it, we fail to 
 reach the truth, and we fail to reach right 
 conduct ; that we act against our own interests 
 when we attempt to go beyond what is dealt 
 with by the procedure of natural inquiry. 
 Naturalism therefore is definitely in conflict 
 with a religion which rests upon revelation. 
 
 There are many elements in common between 
 the two points of view the religious and the 
 naturalistic ; but, as totals, they are different, 
 and even opposite one to the other. For the 
 one says, " Nature and Science, the independent 
 results of inquiry, are enough ; " the other says, 
 " Nature and Science are not enough, either for 
 the guidance of our minds or for the control of 
 our conduct." 
 
 Now what might be the claim of Naturalism
 
 12 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 with regard to Religion, and with regard to a 
 believer's life, if it were put into a formal 
 shape ? It might be something like this. We 
 are taught more and more, or rather we see 
 more and more clearly, that Nature left to 
 itself, working mechanically, produces in the 
 end the best results. It produces something 
 which may be called good. There is an elimin- 
 ation of what is not good, a casting-out of 
 what is weak and valueless to the body as a 
 whole, to the whole community which is con- 
 cerned ; and this elimination, if it is allowed 
 to go far enough, will leave us with a result 
 which is better than what we started with. 
 Nature is our guide let us get back to 
 Nature. Something like that might be the 
 first proposition. 
 
 Then, in the second place : If Nature is our 
 guide, it must be wrong to resist Nature. 
 
 Thirdly, revelation resists Nature, or the 
 notion of a revelation prompts us to resist 
 Nature. Therefore revelation is the enemy 
 of the true progress of the human race. 
 
 There you have the position, as it might be 
 stated formally. Nature is our guide, Nature 
 would leave us no real enemies at the last. It 
 will lead us out as a body, as a social body,
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 13 
 
 into our true perfection. To resist it is the 
 only sin Science knows about. Revelation 
 teaches us to resist this process. Therefore it 
 is precisely revelation, or the belief in it, which 
 we have to get rid of, in order to secure the 
 rapid progress of human society. 
 
 Now let me add a word to limit our dis- 
 cussion. We are not at present more imme- 
 diately concerned with the contrast between 
 Naturalism and revealed Eeligion, as they are 
 different views concerning the origin of things. 
 We had that debate out rather fully in the 
 last century. If there is a debate now between 
 Naturalism and Eeligion, it is not concerned 
 so much with origins ; it is not a case of two 
 theories of how the world came to be what 
 it is, pitted against each other. It is rather 
 a conflict of two schemes of conduct, two 
 plans of campaign, two methods in which the 
 world is to be made something different from 
 what it is. We may at any rate for our pur- 
 pose leave altogether on one side to-night the 
 whole consideration of the conflict of Keligion 
 and Science so far as it is a conflict about the 
 present state of the facts. This is an artificial 
 arrangement, but we must accept artificial
 
 14 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 arrangements when we have to make use of 
 a very limited time for discussion. 
 
 We are to think, then, of Naturalism and 
 the Christian Eeligion, as they are rival 
 schemes for the conduct of life, rival plans 
 of campaign, rival descriptions of our duty in 
 making the world something different from 
 what it is. And we have to examine the 
 advice of modernism : " Leave life to Nature 
 and things will come out right." 
 
 At this point we are obliged to raise a pre- 
 liminary question. Can we, in this fairly broad 
 sense, resist Nature ? Is it possible that Eeligion 
 can really present a substantial obstacle to the 
 process of evolution that is, the getting to 
 the best, as judged by the measures of Science, 
 through the process of natural selection ? Can 
 Religion interfere with that ? 
 
 Now you will find it very difficult upon the 
 Naturalistic hypothesis to give any answer to 
 that question. If you say that Religion can 
 resist Nature, it will then appear that there is 
 something in the world because Religion is in 
 the world which is not Nature ; that there is 
 something which is able to act upon man by 
 some law which is not the law of natural selec-
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 15 
 
 tion, and not the law of Nature in its broadest 
 conception. How else does it resist Nature ? 
 If you say Religion is an active force, then I 
 ask, Why is not that a part of Nature, just 
 as much as the rest of that system of things 
 you are speaking of? Why may I not take 
 in this institution of praise and prayer and 
 thankfulness and sacrifice, and count it at 
 least as much a part of the process of natural 
 improvement as are the hideous social in- 
 stitutions which in certain quarters are 
 allowed to have that character ? If cutting 
 off a man's head in extreme cases and this 
 is far from being an extreme case among 
 tragic and forbidding institutions if execution 
 as an institution belongs to Nature, and who 
 will deny that it does ? then why is not 
 the practice of prayer, praise, and listening 
 to holy words, why is not all that a part 
 of Nature too ? 
 
 Religion must either be a part of Nature 
 or not. If it is a part of Nature, why are 
 you jealous of it (I am speaking to an 
 imaginary Naturalist) ; why do you wish people 
 to believe less in this system of thought and 
 conduct in the Ten Commandments, for 
 example if they are a part of Nature, a part
 
 16 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 of a general order by which the best is to be 
 produced ? 
 
 And if, on the other hand, you say Keligion 
 is not a part of Nature, then you are in the 
 situation which we arrived at just now. You 
 are alleging that there exists somehow, either 
 somewhere or nowhere and if nowhere, then 
 we are landed in the purest idealism, which 
 is the essence of all that is contradictory to 
 Naturalism there exists some force which is 
 able to affect the progress of men's lives, and 
 which is not Nature not inside the limits of 
 man's natural constitution. 
 
 We are landed therefore at the very outset 
 in a dilemma. Either Religion is part of 
 Nature, and ought to be maintained, or it is 
 not apart of Nature, and therefore Naturalism, 
 as a sufficient theory of existence, falls to 
 the ground. But for my own part I will 
 grant that there is a conflict between Natural- 
 ism and Religion; and in order to make 
 things pleasanter I will waive the considerable 
 controversial advantage which accrues to me 
 by my admission of the conflict. For if 
 there is a conflict, then there is something 
 beyond Nature, beyond Science. I will waive 
 that advantage ; I will allow that there is
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE?' 17 
 
 something that resists Nature, without urging 
 that this leaves those in an illogical position, 
 who stand for a doctrine which is purely 
 naturalistic. There is nothing illogical in the 
 position as seen from our point of view ; for 
 the very root of our contention is precisely 
 this that the procedure of observation accord- 
 ing to physical tests does not exhaust the 
 sum of the forces which exist in and which 
 work upon the life of man. That is broadly 
 our position ; that is the position which it is 
 desired on the part of Naturalism to over- 
 throw. Let us be content to say, then, that 
 there is a conflict between Religion and a 
 naturalistic view of Nature. 
 
 Now, what are the heads under which the 
 conflict presents itself to those who believe in 
 the guidance of Nature as sufficient ? And 
 here let me say I am speaking of men, serious 
 and earnest, wishing for the best things, 
 wishing for purity, wishing for peace and 
 social order, and who see much in Religion 
 which puzzles them ; not of men who are 
 making a stalking-horse of Science in order 
 to promote the worship of impulse that is 
 an old story with which we are fairly well 
 acquainted ; but men who are really in
 
 18 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 earnest, and who apparently forget the horrible 
 old thing Nature really is, and seem to be 
 ignorant of what Religion is actually aiming 
 at ; still men who, under all this ignorance 
 and forgetfulness, are seriously aiming at a 
 true progress of human nature along lines 
 which would be altogether within the account 
 of Science. Now what would be the heads 
 of such a conflict as it is conceived by such 
 earnest men, as it is conceived indeed by the 
 man that is within each of us at certain times ? 
 for there is a 'Naturalist' within us, and he 
 wakes up from time to time with terrible and 
 very paralysing doubts about the real import- 
 ance of religious limitations of conduct, and of 
 the hopes to which Religion urges us to press on. 
 The conflict might be described in some 
 such terms as this : Religion teaches us that 
 is the religion of Christ to despise the body ; 
 Science teaches us that our first duty is the 
 maintenance of the body in perfect health. 
 Religion has regard to the interests of a 
 man's self, a man's soul, and withdraws him 
 by his very earnestness from the general 
 struggle of social life ; Science sees the good 
 of the individual in the progress of the com- 
 munity. Religion regards the distant future,
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE?' 19 
 
 and begs men to be continually giving them- 
 selves to a preparation for a far-off Judgment 
 Day, instead of bracing themselves, as Science 
 advises, to create justice to-day on the earth 
 where they stand. 
 
 That would be, in the crudest and baldest 
 way, the aspect of the difference to an earnest- 
 minded 'Naturalist' who had not well kept 
 pace with the actual life of the Christian 
 body, who would suppose (as has in fact been 
 supposed) that our religion calls upon us to 
 despise the flesh ; that our religion calls upon us 
 to care only for our own interest, and to leave 
 alone the great hurry and the great struggle 
 of Science and of life ; that our religion keeps 
 us in a narrow track, drawing ourselves away 
 from the defilements of this present life, and 
 waiting for an appearing of the Lord, pre- 
 paring for a future judgment which is quite 
 separate from the life we now live; while 
 Naturalism, Science, History, Modern Thought, 
 teach us that a man's fate must depend upon 
 what he does to-day, and that his business 
 is not to trouble himself about a far-off event 
 of which he knows nothing, but to see that 
 he bears himself rightly in the moments as 
 they pass.
 
 20 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 Now, with regard to all these points of 
 contrast, we recognise, as soon as we state 
 them, the falseness of the distinctions which 
 are drawn. We see that on our side really 
 lies most of that truth which the Naturalist 
 teaching attempts to revive. Nevertheless we 
 have to admit that Religion, as it is actually 
 preached and actually adopted and actually 
 lived, has given ground for an accusation 
 like that which we have suggested. There 
 have been long stretches in the Church's life 
 when it was imagined that the cause of Christ 
 against the Devil was nothing else but the 
 cause of the soul against the body; that to 
 be religious was to pray in secret and keep 
 oneself from the bustle of actual existence; 
 that Religion had nothing to do with the 
 passing day, but ought to despise it; that 
 when it spoke of things temporal it meant 
 things which are now, whereas in fact the things 
 which are eternal are now and not only in the 
 future. There has been, and there may be 
 again, a so-called religious temper which gives 
 a man a good conscience in his own conceit, 
 if he has thought a great deal on the subject 
 of God, although he has led a whole lifetime 
 without ever having done a hand's turn for
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE?' 21 
 
 the generation and the people and the country 
 amongst whom and in which it was God's 
 will to cause him to be born. 
 
 We have need to tremble about all that. 
 There is a possibility of having a religion 
 which has this fearful guilt of being without 
 contact with the age in which it was God's 
 will that we should have our being, and the 
 good works He has prepared for us to walk 
 in. If it had been God's will that we 
 should be born in the Middle Ages, He had 
 means enough at His disposal to bring us 
 into being at that time. We take a very grave 
 responsibility upon ourselves when we allow 
 the actual age in which we live, the actual 
 men and women with whom we are connected 
 by blood, to become meaningless to us while 
 we give ourselves to a solitary musing upon 
 what we take to be the idea of God. 
 
 But the correction of all that mistake 
 lies in the region of Theology. Sermons 
 are wanted to cure that, to give a wider 
 knowledge of what Christianity really is. But 
 this is no part of an actual conflict between 
 Christianity as it really is, and the study of 
 Nature as it really is. It lies within the 
 region of the preacher's ordinary work to be
 
 22 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 perpetually attacking this. It lies within the 
 work of every Christian to be seeking to grow 
 in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, 
 and to find out what His Holy Will is ; above 
 all things to be studying the New Testament, 
 so as to find out what is Christianity. 
 
 We do well, I think, in passing, to mention 
 that there is enough to make men outside 
 suppose that this is our attitude, but it be- 
 longs to the ordinary course of our Christian 
 instruction and our Christian endeavour to 
 cure that mistake. It does not belong in any 
 special way to our relation towards those who 
 are without. We are false, I mean, not to 
 Nature, when we behave or think like that 
 we are false to Christ. It is a trouble which 
 lies inside our own body politic, the Church. 
 We must endeavour always as we go along to 
 be reading the Bible in such a way as to find 
 out in it meanings which may fit life as it 
 is actually lived fit it, I say, not always 
 accept it ; not always support it, but always 
 meet it, if necessary in hard conflict. We 
 must be striving to find in the Divine deposit 
 of truth meanings, such as are there in 
 abundance, which shall come into actual con- 
 tact with the life and the men that we know.
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 23 
 
 We must not, on the contrary as there is 
 a temptation to do twist and misrepresent the 
 life which actually exists, in order to make it fit 
 our preconceived notion of what the Bible says. 
 It is sadly possible to make extreme views 
 out of the Bible extreme views concerning 
 poverty and riches, concerning health and 
 sickness, concerning the duties of the State 
 and of the individual and then, having picked 
 up these extreme views, by a method of in- 
 terpretation which has not brought to bear 
 upon the Holy words the very experience of 
 life which was meant to draw out their mean- 
 ing, then to go out from the dark chamber of 
 unilluminated study to force these extreme 
 opinions upon a world which will not tolerate 
 them I do not mean which will not accept 
 them, for we must expect hostility to the truth; 
 but which has no points by which it can be 
 caught hold of by them and grappled with. 
 
 Avoiding this danger, we must live our lives, 
 praying to God for the guidance of His Holy 
 Spirit, and try to find continually in the Word 
 of God that light which may guide us in the 
 world in which, as a matter of fact, we have to 
 do our duty. 
 
 So then there is matter of complaint on the
 
 24 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 side of natural knowledge, of the way in which 
 Religion is sometimes presented, and in that 
 sense we have need of a more natural religion 
 a religion which will take account of men's 
 conditions as they really are, of the interests of 
 family life, of the interests and necessities of 
 the State and of Society ; a religion which 
 will not suppose that such vast facts as these 
 can be swept away lightly as a mere mistake 
 into which the whole framework of human 
 nature has been allowed to stumble unguided, 
 but will rather take them to be the problem 
 set by Almighty God into which the special 
 application of His solutions has to be read. 
 The other course, the course we are to reject, 
 is like the course of a doctor who, for the sake 
 of a theory of disease, should refuse to see his 
 patients in order that nothing might upset the 
 integrity of his system of medicine. 
 
 There is, then, a certain amount of mistake 
 about Eeligion ; and at the same time there is 
 a certain amount of excuse for that mistake. 
 But Keligion, as it really is, is clear of the 
 supposed difficulties. 
 
 Let us take our three points in succession : 
 The question of the spirit and the body ; the 
 question of the individual and the whole ; the
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 25 
 
 question of the present and the future. Or 
 rather, let us concentrate upon the first. For 
 in our age most happily an immense amount 
 of work has been done to show the essentially, 
 social character of the Christian life, and most 
 of those present to-day are probably ourselves 
 ardent in that very cause, in the effort to exalt 
 and display the social implications and duties 
 of Christianity. It would be hard indeed if in 
 this great place we were unaware of that work, 
 for it is deeply associated with St. Paul's, and 
 it is conspicuously the teaching of this cathe- 
 dral which has driven the social view of 
 Christianity deep into our hearts and con- 
 sciences. To-day, then and one question 
 will be enough for our hour I will speak 
 only about the oppression or contempt of 
 the body which Christianity is supposed to 
 teach. 
 
 Now our Holy Faith teaches no contempt of 
 the body whatever. In one place our body 
 is called " the body of our humiliation " the 
 body that serves us for our time of servitude 
 and trial. But, so far is it from being despised, 
 that we are taught in our own religion two things 
 concerning it which raise its dignity far higher 
 than it has ever been conceived by the natural
 
 26 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 understanding. We are told, first, about its 
 origin, that it was shaped by God, that God 
 breathed into it the breath of life. We are 
 told about its future, that it is to rise again to an 
 eternal life. And we are told about its course, 
 its history, that it has been and is a shrine 
 of God Himself; that it was the clothing of the 
 spirit of Jesus, who is Himself one with the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost ; that in us who are 
 His members, the flesh itself is the temple of 
 that Holy Spirit, by reason of our union with 
 Christ, in whose body the Holy Spirit dwells 
 in the Head and in the members. The body is 
 fed in the highest action of our religion, even 
 with the Spirit Himself; it is fed by the 
 spiritual food of Christ's body and blood. It 
 is to be guarded with a dignity which has 
 never been awarded it in any other system of 
 thought ; just because, in spite of its present 
 infirmities and the evils for which it is the 
 road, although it is not their source, it has 
 itself a heavenly destiny, and is to rise again 
 a spiritual body, to be part of the permanent 
 life of man in the Presence of God. So we 
 can at once sweep away the notion, as of course 
 every one of you has already done in silence 
 when I spoke of it, that there is in true Keligion
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 27 
 
 anything which can in any way be described as 
 contempt or hatred of the body. 
 
 But what is there ? There is government of 
 the body. We have been given something 
 which is for the guidance and correction, for 
 the cure and redemption, and for the exercise 
 and use of the body. We have been given a 
 rational principle. And the spirit is indwelt 
 by the Holy Spirit, in order that the body may 
 be guided to its true end, which is to share in 
 the holy purpose of God. It has eternal ends 
 and needs, an eternal principle to lead it now, 
 so that it may at last reach to those ends. 
 
 Now, when a man rides a horse he won't let 
 it go the way it would like to go, won't let it 
 go the way instinct leads it, won't let it go by 
 chance ; holds its head, sits it firm, guides it 
 straight, spurs and checks it. Do we say the 
 man hates or despises the horse ; or that he 
 thinks the horse unnecessary or negligible ; or 
 that he can get on as well without the horse as 
 with it ? The horse and the rider make one 
 whole for the time being, and in regard to 
 certain ends. For the purpose of this figure of 
 speech, the horseman is the horse and the man ; 
 and the man does all the guiding. But this 
 does not involve anything like either contempt
 
 28 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 or hatred or independence of the horse. So, if 
 we use such language provisionally, the soul, 
 the rational element, has to guide the body, to 
 control it, to feed it with due meat for its 
 necessities, to stop it from eating what it does 
 not want, to check it, never to let it be the guide 
 and always to guide it ; and yet, that does not 
 make the body insignificant, worthless, un- 
 necessary. On the contrary, just as the rider 
 has the deepest gratitude for the animal and 
 will give " his kingdom for a horse," so the 
 immortal spirit thinks of the body, and must 
 bend its powers to the training of the body 
 that it may have wherewithal to serve God. 
 It guides, controls, corrects, but is not either 
 independent of it, nor in a position to despise 
 it, far less in a position to hate it. 
 
 Now you will say that this is a very im- 
 perfect figure. For the soul is not like a rider 
 that sits upon a horse ; the soul and the 
 body are only names for different aspects of 
 the one thing which is a man. And I heartily 
 agree with you in that. We must not think 
 permanently, we must only think provisionally, 
 of the soul and body as two living entities, 
 one using the other. They are only two 
 names for the one essentially indivisible life of
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 29 
 
 man. Let us take it so. Let the rider be 
 practically a part of one animal with the 
 horse ; let him be a Centaur. May not we 
 say if he is that, his proper function is to 
 guide and control the rest of himself ? If you 
 speak of reason as something separate from 
 your bodily life, you have to say its duty is to 
 control that bodily life which we set in con- 
 trast with it. But if you say that reason 
 is only a part, only a function, of that very 
 bodily life, if you take the extreme view that 
 thought itself is a product of the physical 
 process, yet it is such a product as to have 
 this for its obvious purpose, to guide the rest 
 to guide that which produces it. It is 
 either necessary or unnecessary. If it is 
 unnecessary, how did natural selection allow 
 it to survive ? (I am speaking now as I must 
 from the Naturalist point of view.) If it is 
 necessary, can it have any function except 
 the function of guiding, checking, controlling ? 
 Supposing the engine and the engineer were 
 all one thing, can the engineer have any 
 purpose in the whole, except to guide the rest ? 
 He certainly cannot drive the screw. If he 
 has not to steer, to check, to let it go and 
 stop it when he wills, it is impossible to assign
 
 30 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 to him any function in the mechanical whole 
 of which he forms a part. If you take it the 
 other way, if you distinguish reason from the 
 rest of your being as if it were the rider of a 
 horse, then the horse will never do without 
 the rider ; the riderless horse can never win a 
 race. But if he is part of the whole, then he 
 is that part of the whole whose duty it is to 
 control and correct the rest. 
 
 He is to ride in the horse's interest as well 
 as his own. Indeed it is precisely in controlling 
 the horse to continue this figure that he 
 maintains its interest. And so it is in that 
 actual thing at which we are aiming in our 
 figures of speech the life of body and spirit. 
 He who lives by the spirit, making the spirit 
 ruler, saves body and spirit alike. He who 
 lives after the flesh, letting the flesh be the 
 guide, loses not the soul only, but the flesh 
 also. To live according to the flesh is to drive 
 straight to the death of the flesh, its moral 
 corruption ; a death, I mean, which is not the 
 inevitable passage of the flesh through the 
 gates of the grave, but which is the degrada- 
 tion of its character. To live according to the 
 flesh is to drive straight to this death of the 
 flesh, even as to ride according to the horse
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 31 
 
 would be to ride straight to the fall of the 
 horse as well as of the man. There are times 
 of course when the horse needs the light hand 
 which depends upon the firm seat. So there 
 is the light hand upon the body, as well as the 
 firm seat of the authority of the spirit over it. 
 At such times we must go freely, we must guide 
 gently. But all the while, even when we seem 
 to give the horse its head, it is for the purposes 
 of the rider, according to the judgment of the 
 rider ; and when the body has its swing, it 
 must be for the purposes of the spirit. To live 
 according to the spirit is not to live out of the 
 flesh, but to make the flesh live for the pur- 
 poses of the spirit, informed by Almighty God. 
 So then our attitude towards the flesh is not 
 one of hostility, nor one of contempt, nor one of 
 subjection. It is one of rule. And of rule of a 
 particular kind, which we in this country, 
 happily, know as that of a constitutional 
 sovereign. Our spirit is to have a consti- 
 tutional sovereignty over the flesh. That is to 
 say, it is to govern the body without appeal, 
 but it is to govern the body for the body's own 
 lasting interests, and it is to govern it according 
 to its actual constitution and its real needs. 
 And so it is not to starve it and whip it without
 
 32 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 need ; it is not to put it into solitude and 
 darkness ; it is not to shroud it from information 
 and knowledge. It is to feed it with meat 
 convenient for the purpose, to guide it, and 
 if necessary to discipline it. It is always 
 necessary indeed; there is no 'if about it. 
 It is the work of the spirit to do all this 
 constitutionally that is to say, in the interest 
 of the body as well as of the spirit, the body 
 finding its interests in the service of the spirit ; 
 and to do this according to the constitution of 
 the body not ignorantly, fanatically, but in 
 correspondence with the actual lawful needs 
 and demands of the body, in a freedom which 
 advances as obedience advances, as the body 
 more and more lives according to the law and 
 purpose of the spirit. So the flesh also shall 
 find increasing vigour, power and quickness 
 in its movements, because this very guiding 
 control to which it is subjected guides it 
 and controls it to its own full career. You 
 must have seen, if you have ever watched a 
 steeplechase, what happens to the horse that 
 drops its rider. It is probably rare for a 
 horse in that condition to engage one fence. It 
 may gallop a bit on the flat ; 1)ut the riderless 
 horse is not the better able to run its race for
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 33 
 
 its freedom. Even so, the ungoverned body is 
 not the swifter and freer. It is precisely the 
 firm seat and the light hand ; the true control, 
 the judgment, the knowledge of what is ahead, 
 which make up the very function of the spirit ; 
 it is these which guide the body to its true 
 interests, to its real life, under the power of 
 Him who is the life of the body as well as of 
 the soul and of the spirit. 
 
 So far as we have gone at present, it appears 
 that while there is a conflict between Religion 
 and Naturalism, this conflict is not exactly 
 what I have supposed it to appear to a 
 'Naturalist.' For Religion is in strong dis- 
 agreement with Naturalism, not because it 
 despises the present, or the body, or the 
 society which Naturalism honours ; but because 
 it insists in opposition to Naturalism that the 
 true culture of the present or of society is 
 impossible without faith in that which is 
 beyond the world ; and that the body is ruined 
 unless it is governed by the spirit. 
 
 Now in what I have been saying, there has 
 been much which it is not worth while to 
 remember. I would advise, if I may, that you 
 should remember " this one little point about 
 the constitutional government of the body by
 
 34 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 the spirit ; for I think in these words you have 
 a real thought which is easily remembered and 
 which is worth remembering, and which is a 
 practical guide in our great task of personal 
 reform.
 
 LECTUKE II 
 
 CAN NATURALISM TAKE THE PLACE OF RELIGION 
 AS A GUIDE FOR INDIVIDUAL CONDUCT ?
 
 THE piece of work which we are trying to 
 do is a strictly limited one, and I am anxious 
 to make clear the purpose which I have in 
 my own mind. It is very difficult to under- 
 stand anything at all ; still more difficult to 
 make any one else understand it; and totally 
 impossible when he is meanwhile trying to 
 understand something different altogether ; 
 for example, the doctrine of Sacraments or of 
 Grace, or the difficulties between Religion 
 and Science. I am not talking of any of these 
 things. I am speaking merely of the inade- 
 quacy, trying to get at some explanation of 
 the insufficiency, of the Naturalist doctrine, as 
 a guide either for the life of a single man or 
 for the life of society. Last time we did just 
 this ; we revised our terms. I said, let us 
 speak not of a contrast between Science and 
 Religion, but of a contrast between Naturalism 
 and Christianity. There cannot be a final and 
 
 absolute contrast between Science and Religion, 
 
 37
 
 38 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 because Science is nothing but the effort to 
 describe things as they really are, and of 
 course it cannot possibly be the object of 
 Religion to describe things as they really are 
 not. Obviously these two things in the long 
 run must be trying to come to terms. But 
 Naturalism can be in profound conflict with 
 Keligion. What do I mean by Naturalism ? 
 Briefly I would define Naturalism as being 
 the attempt to make Science do the work of 
 Religion as well as its own work. There is 
 on that side no tendency to come to terms 
 with us at all quite the contrary ; there is 
 an effort to make the opposition which is 
 between the two modes of thought as bold 
 as possible. And we described the terms of 
 this opposition, as it is proposed to us, in this 
 short way. The three propositions which seem 
 to be set before us are : First, Nature will 
 guide us aright if only we leave Nature to 
 itself and follow it. Secondly, revelation or 
 the pretence of a belief in revelation resists 
 Nature. Thirdly, therefore let us get rid of 
 revelation, and both individual life and social 
 life will improve more rapidly than before. 
 
 With regard to the case thus stated, in the 
 first place, I raised a question. I "took an
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 39 
 
 objection," as they say in court. I said, 
 " Can revelation or the supposed existence 
 of a revelation resist Nature ? " (Let me say 
 in passing that I heartily believe in revelation 
 because that is not always understood when 
 one is trying to describe an argument.) Can 
 revelation resist Nature ? A revelation or the 
 notion of or trust in revelation is either a 
 part of Nature or it is not. If it is a part 
 of Nature, why should it not be allowed to 
 contribute to the general result as much as 
 hunger or thirst ? How can it be described 
 as resisting a whole of which it forms a part ? 
 Why is not the Church as legitimate an organ 
 of society, as legitimate an outcome of civilisa- 
 tion, of evolution, as the bank or the rail- 
 way, or institutions less useful than these ? 
 If on the other hand revelation is not a part 
 of Nature, is not a part of the general outcome 
 of evolution, you have given away the whole 
 ground of this system of thought which is 
 called Naturalism ; because that proceeds upon 
 the assumption that there is not anything 
 excepting what is the product of evolution. 
 You have given away your whole case, and 
 the question falls to the ground at once. You 
 find yourself saying in opposition to Religion
 
 40 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 and the religious view of things, that there 
 exists a power in men's hearts, and acting 
 upon human society, able to affect their lives 
 profoundly, which is not a natural force. 
 That is to say, you describe in the most exact 
 terms Religion itself; and if Religion is real 
 it will be impossible to make out that it is 
 unlawful. In order to show it to be un- 
 lawful you must show it to be a sham. So 
 I take that preliminary objection, " Can 
 revelation resist Nature ? " And then you 
 will remember that we waived the argu- 
 mentative advantage which that gave me. I 
 said, I grant you that Religion does resist 
 Nature, because it really does ; and I give you 
 the advantage which that conclusion gives me 
 with regard to the whole theory of Naturalism, 
 which is the theory, of course, that Nature is 
 everything, and that there is no such thing as 
 a force acting upon man which is not a part of 
 his constitution or of the constitution of the 
 world. I chose the alternative that there is a 
 real resistance ; and foregoing the consequent 
 advantage, proceeded to criticise the statement 
 of the case ; and I got only so far as this in my 
 criticism. There are items, we agreed, of sup- 
 posed opposition which have no substantial
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 41 
 
 existence ; that is to say, some of those matters 
 in which a purely Naturalistic view of life sup- 
 poses itself to be confronted by Religion are not 
 matters in which Religion opposes Science or 
 Naturalism either. We are in particular not 
 committed by Religion to the view that men 
 are to live for the future only and not for the 
 present ; that men are to live for themselves 
 only and not for society ; that men are to live 
 in a state of relentless hostility to their own 
 bodies, and not rather in the position which I 
 described, as a position of constitutional ruler- 
 ship, in which the body is ruled by a superior 
 faculty for its own best good, according to its 
 actual constitution, and with regard to its 
 proper needs. But all that was merely pre- 
 liminary, merely getting rid of those items of 
 debate which are made much of in recommend- 
 ing a purely material view of human life, but 
 which are not points in which Religion is really 
 opposed, so far as the case has yet been stated, 
 to common-sense. I do not mean to say that 
 there is no more in Religion than common- 
 sense. I do not mean to say that I have 
 given an adequate account of a Christian man's 
 relation to the world and to the flesh, any 
 more than to the devil ; but I have simply
 
 42 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 swept away those crude notions that Religion 
 teaches us to hate and to despise the present 
 and to live for the Day of Judgment as if that 
 great Day could be isolated from our present 
 life ; that Religion is selfish and unconcerned 
 even with the temporal prosperity of the people 
 round about us. 
 
 To-day we proceed to real differences which 
 exist a real dislocation between Naturalism 
 and Christianity. Now there are character- 
 istics of the Naturalist creed or system which 
 are directly opposed to Christianity, and there 
 are characteristics which are opposed only in 
 a secondary way, as insufficient. That is to say, 
 Christianity sometimes transcends or goes be- 
 yond natural knowledge, sometimes contra- 
 dicts natural error. But before we accept 
 this distinction between those views which 
 are opposed to true Religion and those views 
 which only fall short of true Religion, let 
 us remember that in Religion and indeed in 
 all practical matters, what is insufficient is 
 practically opposed as soon as it is offered to 
 us as an alternative. Half a loaf is better 
 than no bread, but half a loaf is less than 
 a whole loaf. And if we are asked to take 
 half a loaf instead of a whole loaf, we have
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 43 
 
 not merely an insufficient supply of bread, but 
 we have an attempt at fraud. As soon as a 
 man attempts to make me take half for the 
 whole, it is just the same case for me practi- 
 cally as if he were trying to rob me. And 
 accordingly, views drawn from Nature con- 
 cerning human life, about which I shall pre- 
 sently speak, which are in themselves, and in 
 their own sphere and place true for their own 
 place, are religiously nothing but diametrical 
 oppositions to the faith, just so soon as they 
 are offered us as being sufficient, as being an 
 alternative for Religion. There is no harm in 
 halves, in having a small supply when you 
 cannot get all ; but there is great harm in being 
 put off with a small supply when you might 
 have all, and when the small supply is repre- 
 sented to be all that there is. In that case there 
 is no substance left in the difference between 
 what is opposed and what is merely insufficient. 
 Now here are some heads which I have 
 chosen I won't say at random but I have 
 chosen them as they occurred to me just now, 
 and which, being chosen in that way, have all 
 the more value. For they are simply such heads 
 of thought as would occur to any thinking 
 man at once, and do not depend in the least
 
 44 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 upon knowledge of the details of scientific 
 controversy as it is at present conducted. I 
 wish specially to avoid that. Now what are 
 the heads which at once occur to us as heads 
 in respect of which Naturalism opposes itself to 
 Christianity ? 
 
 The first head is that of knowledge. 
 Naturalism not Science, remember, but 
 Naturalism is wholly opposed to the notion 
 that there is either any power of knowledge 
 or any news given specially by God. That is 
 to say, it is opposed to the whole notion of a 
 revelation from God, which is different from 
 and beyond what may be discovered by con- 
 sidering God's works. A dispassionate view 
 of God's works will teach us something. What 
 Naturalism opposes is any claim of knowledge 
 founded upon an alleged message from God. 
 There it is in clear diametrical opposition to 
 Keligion. 
 
 Then with regard to force and working. 
 Naturalism is clearly opposed to any notion 
 or doctrine or belief in a help from God which 
 is different from the ordinary supply of the 
 forces of Nature. That is to say, it is totally 
 opposed to every notion of Grace, to every 
 notion of Sacraments, to every notion of Prayer.
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE V 45 
 
 In the third place, Naturalism is, I won't say 
 committed to an opposition to the idea of free- 
 dom and choice, but it more and more tends 
 to be stiffened and hardened into an attitude 
 of opposition towards the notion of free-will 
 and actual choice and movement in an indi- 
 vidual life. 
 
 Fourthly and here again is a case where 
 the opposition is by no means as yet hard- 
 ened and stiffened and permanent the whole 
 trend of Naturalistic thought is against the 
 notion of charity, mutual help, consideration, 
 toleration to the weak, preservation of the 
 helpless in the evolution of the social body. 
 Now that last head belongs to the subject 
 which I have chosen for my last lecture, which 
 will raise the question whether Naturalism will 
 give us a sufficient guide for the conduct of 
 men in society. We will leave it out there- 
 fore to-day and think of these three heads : 
 the opposition which is between Naturalism 
 and the notion of news from God ; the oppo- 
 sition which there is between Naturalism and 
 the notion of help from God ; and the grow- 
 ing tendency to a fixed opposition to the 
 notion of freedom in the individual life. Now 
 these three heads will take in a great deal of
 
 46 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 the difficulties which are raised in various 
 quarters in the name of common-sense or of 
 Science. For of the various difficulties about 
 belief which take so many different forms, 
 many prove to be at bottom nothing else than 
 a rejection of the very notion that God has 
 ever told us anything at all about Himself or 
 about ourselves. They appear, when they are 
 superficially examined, to be objections to this 
 or that part of our belief; but really, when 
 pressed home, it will be found impossible to 
 distinguish the particular part objected to from 
 all the rest of Religion ; and the objection will 
 be found to be in substance an objection 
 against the notion that God has disclosed 
 anything by way of teaching. Again, the 
 various objections which are taken against the 
 sacramental system of the Church, against 
 miracles as they are recounted in the sacred 
 history, against Providence as it is seen in 
 individual lives, against the practice of prayer 
 for the improvement of character all these 
 various objections, which are sometimes an- 
 nounced as if they were specially detailed 
 difficulties, calling only for concession at a 
 particular point in order that we might have 
 peace all these are really based upon a fund a-
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 47 
 
 mental and profound objection to the very 
 notion that God ever puts forth His force, His 
 help, His love in human lives. You see, then, 
 that I am to-day engaged in quite a different 
 sort of work from that to which we sometimes 
 give ourselves. Sometimes our business the 
 business of those of us who love both Science 
 and Keligion is to try to show that the 
 opposition between Science and Religion is not 
 really so fierce as is generally supposed. I 
 am sometimes sorry to think how much ink 
 has been shed, and how much breath has been 
 used, in trying to show that ; for my profound 
 belief now is that instead of our being very 
 much concerned to show that the opposition is 
 unreal, our object ought to be to precipitate a 
 conflict ; not, God forbid, between Religion and 
 Science between two forms of truth but 
 between Religion and Naturalism. We ought 
 not to be at all anxious to avoid a conflict. 
 This is a practical affair, a matter of force 
 working in men's hearts ; and unless we thus 
 set ourselves strongly upon our own side, we 
 shall be letting the material for the proof of 
 our side be eaten away by the fact that there 
 are not enough Christian lives. While Chris- 
 tian men are busy in showing what is quite
 
 48 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 true, namely, that they do not disagree with the 
 teachings of Science, meantime they are neg- 
 lecting their Christian lives ; and the opportunity 
 is going by, and the only material on which we 
 have to argue is getting thinner and thinner, 
 and more and more scarce not because Chris- 
 tian people are too much opposed to the teach- 
 ings of natural science, but because Christian 
 people are very greatly too forgetful of the 
 teachings of revelation, and far too slow 
 to take advantage of the powers of grace. 
 We have, therefore, instead of trying to 
 minimise this conflict, to set it out in the 
 clearest terms. We have to say that although 
 within the range of Science, on its own proper 
 level, the notions which come from the study 
 of material objects are valid (while con- 
 tinually growing and changing), yet the doc- 
 trine that natural knowledge is enough for 
 men is a doctrine which we must oppose by 
 every means in our power. It is a doctrine 
 which a man cannot possibly hold in his 
 heart or mind, and at the same time believe 
 that God Almighty has given us a light to 
 guide us on our way. 
 
 What we have to do to-day, therefore, is to 
 set these two things in clear distinction : to
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 49 
 
 say there is the doctrine that men can know 
 nothing, excepting what they scramble together 
 for themselves out of the dust of the earth ; 
 and there is the doctrine diametrically opposed 
 to this, viz. that, besides that knowledge which 
 men have by the study of the objects round 
 about them, God has planted in their hearts 
 in various degrees rising up to that higher 
 degree in which it is inspiration a certain 
 information of Himself. And moreover God 
 has given to us in Christ the complete know- 
 ledge for our purposes of what He is and 
 desires us to be. There is no truce between 
 these two lines. This illustrates what I mean 
 about an insufficient doctrine being really an 
 opposed one. The doctrines of Science are 
 good on their own line, and we ought to be 
 more grateful to them and not less ; but as 
 soon as they are supposed to cover the range 
 of human life, and are offered as a final and 
 sufficient guide for men, they become a rival 
 alternative, and an enemy to the faith in God's 
 message which He has sent down into men's 
 hearts primarily in the heart of Jesus Christ, 
 where there reigned a full knowledge of God 
 by the co-existence of two natures in His one 
 
 Person ; but also in the men who were instru- 
 
 D
 
 50 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 ments of the inspiration which comes really 
 from Him, and which is, by many degrees, 
 linked on to that inward knowledge of God 
 which all men, if they will attend to it, have 
 in their own consciousness. 
 
 Now with regard to this matter of truth, I 
 think that we must not forget that there is a 
 punishment for neglecting God in respect of 
 truth, just as much as there is a punishment 
 for neglecting God in respect of conduct. I 
 think that the fearful and dreary notions which 
 men have been allowed to entertain about 
 their own origin and nature are a punishment 
 in the mental sphere, in the sphere of specula- 
 tion, for not having been willing to have God 
 in their knowledge. We are all perfectly 
 familiar with the notion that if men will not 
 receive God's help, they will reap the result of 
 neglecting His help in their conduct. That 
 truth we are all familiar with. I do not think 
 we are sufficiently awake to the notion that if 
 a man will neglect God's light in his mind, and 
 will turn away from those informations which 
 God is ready to give, there may be a fearful 
 retribution in the region of thought and 
 curiosity and knowledge. This matter has 
 been confused by a special circumstance. It
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 51 
 
 waa supposed at one time I think very rashly 
 that those who go amiss in speculation and 
 faith had brought this punishment upon them- 
 selves by neglecting God's law of conduct. 
 This was too rashly said by believers. There 
 was no proof of this. And there were proofs 
 in the opposite direction, for many of those 
 men who have been most obscured in their 
 faith have been men who put us to shame 
 by the diligence with which they attempted 
 with all their hearts to follow the law of right 
 conduct as well as they could understand it. 
 But in speaking like that, we are setting 
 together two matters which belong to two 
 different planes. In the plane of conduct, the 
 neglect of God's help for conduct will result in 
 weakness in conduct ; but in the sphere of 
 thought, will not the neglect of God's word 
 naturally lead to a degradation of the powers 
 of speculation themselves ? I believe in my 
 heart that the extreme doctrines of Naturalism 
 the notions for example that men are nothing 
 else at all than members of the great world of 
 animals, not to be distinguished from other 
 animals, excepting by certain accomplishments 
 which they have managed to acquire, which 
 have come to them in the course of evolution
 
 52 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 are the result of such a loss of speculative 
 power. I think that the melancholy and 
 degrading doctrine that we are really, after all, 
 no different from the beasts that perish (an 
 extreme conclusion from the undoubted fact 
 that we are physically in some way or other 
 naturally related to them), is logically strong 
 just because the logic appealed to is fatally 
 confined. I believe that the extreme con- 
 clusions against the spiritual nature of man, 
 the attempt to represent man as nothing but 
 one of the higher apes, the showing of man in 
 series with those low and hopeless forms of life, 
 the doctrine concerning the soul, that it is 
 nothing but a delusion, the doctrine concerning 
 man's mental nature, that it is nothing but an 
 effect of his bodily nature all these unqualified 
 conclusions from physical facts which are in 
 their own region tolerably certain, constitute a 
 Nemesis, a retribution for the mind. Here we 
 see the punishment which a naturalistic scheme 
 of thought receives within itself as a result of 
 the refusal to have God in its knowledge. 
 That sounds a very arbitrary, irrational, over- 
 conservative view nowadays, because, as I have 
 said, we have spent too many years coming cap 
 in hand to Science, for permission to continue to
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 53 
 
 believe in our own souls. It has become a 
 habit. But if we could throw off that habit 
 and look upon ourselves dispassionately : con- 
 sider what life is, what thought is, what 
 affection is, what the ties of family are, what 
 the ties between a man and his friends are ; 
 what our feelings of heroism, of religion, of 
 mercy, of charity, of repentance, what these 
 are really like I say if we will consider these 
 dispassionately, we shall think that the doctrine 
 that all this wonderful world of spiritual life 
 has come up by natural growth out of a life 
 which was not spiritual, is a conclusion which 
 is totally impossible to the mind ; and we shall 
 see that the obvious appearance of natural con- 
 nection which there is between us and those 
 lower forms, the difficulty of drawing a line in 
 the series of evolution, the difficulty of choos- 
 ing the point at which you will say, 'Here 
 natural law stopped, and here came in a spiritual 
 visitation from God ' these difficulties are dif- 
 ficulties for Science, and not for us. It is dif- 
 ficult indeed, I think, to consider the doctrine 
 of descent, and to consider on the other hand 
 human life as it is. But are you going to ask 
 me to give up human life which I know, in 
 return for a doctrine of descent which has been
 
 54 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 modified and re-modified three times to speak 
 of broad and important modifications not 
 within my lifetime, but within my student- 
 time ? Are you going to ask me to give up the 
 solid, inbred, irrefutable knowledge which I 
 have of my own soul and of my mother's soul 
 of that life of the soul which has flowed 
 between us these forty years ? Are you going 
 to ask me to give up that knowledge, because I 
 cannot get it to square with what appears to be 
 the logical outcome of the doctrine of descent as 
 sketched by Darwin ? No. If I find these two 
 things won't run evenly to a union and I 
 acknowledge freely I cannot imagine how to 
 secure the junction ; I see the force of the 
 arguments in favour of the origination of 
 animal forms by descent with modification ; I 
 see the connection between my soul and my 
 body ; I see the strength of the likeness between 
 myself and the lower forms ; I see all that ; 
 I see clearly the difficulty which all this gives 
 rise to but the difficulty is not for religion ; 
 the difficulty is for the natural scheme of 
 thought. It is for my natural wits, not my 
 faith, to limit the frontiers of the kingdom 
 of natural knowledge. Surely it is not the 
 proper task of religion ! We do not get our
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 55 
 
 religion, like dear Kichard Jefieries, from 
 contemplating the iridescence upon our finger 
 nails, you remember that pretty chapter in 
 one of his books. No, like St. Paul, we can say, 
 " I owe nothing to the flesh that I should live 
 after the flesh." It was not from there that we 
 got our confidence about an inward real spirit- 
 ual life and access to God, and a hope of future 
 conformity to Him. And those grounds which 
 actually gave rise to our confidence remain 
 exactly where they did. It is the strangest 
 perversion of argument to contend that spiritual 
 certainties have become less certain because 
 natural explanation does not reach them. 
 Lord Kitchener might just as well have 
 ceased to believe there was such a place as 
 Khartoum during the years when he could not 
 get at it. 
 
 Formerly we were invited when I tried 
 to be a student of natural science to give up 
 spiritual facts because they were explained. 
 Then it was shown that they could not be 
 explained, that the available explanation did 
 not go far enough. And now we are invited to 
 give them up because they cannot be explained. 
 There is indeed an enormous gap between the 
 furthest point to which natural explanation
 
 56 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 goes and the most rudimentary condition of 
 real spiritual life ; but the existence of that 
 gap is not a difficulty for us as Christians. 
 We shall go on with the two operations of the 
 mental life. We shall still abide in those 
 grounds of confidence in our spiritual nature 
 which were founded of old ; and while we are 
 busy with our work of natural explanation if 
 that belongs to us, or while we are looking on 
 at it from outside with a natural and wholesome 
 curiosity, we shall be content to see a vast 
 discontinuity between the two lines of thought. 
 We are not disturbed because the most ad- 
 vanced discoveries of physics in respect of 
 molecular motion I mean in respect of elec- 
 tricity, or of the Rontgen rays and Hertzian 
 rays do not reach up to, so as to make a 
 junction with, the lowest forms of movement 
 with which physiology is concerned. We go 
 on with our physiology from its primary datum 
 of life ; and we go on with our physics, mount- 
 ing in its highest investigations to the study 
 of mysterious molecular movements ; and we 
 know there is an immeasurable distance 
 between the two the subtlest vibrations dis- 
 closed by physics and the lowest exhibition of 
 that life which is studied by physiology. But
 
 * IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 57 
 
 this does not prevent the contented cultivation 
 of the two separated fields of knowledge, by men 
 who are waiting for the time when they shall 
 come to be seen as one. And if this be so, 
 how much more shall we go on in comfort 
 and content in the exploration, in the study, 
 and much more, in the fostering and in the 
 exercise of a spiritual life, although those 
 explanations which we are able to construct 
 out of our best knowledge of phenomena 
 do not nearly arrive at the point of making a 
 junction with the lowest form of that spiritual 
 work. In one word, the discontinuity between 
 natural knowledge and the knowledge which 
 is of the life of the soul in God is no kind of 
 reason for distrusting the latter, and it is even 
 no reason for distrusting the former and the 
 lower kind of knowledge either. 
 
 We are obliged, then, to say of Naturalistic 
 doctrine that as soon as it pretends to be a 
 complete account of man it is a most dangerous 
 thing. There is a sense really of indignation 
 when one regards the thinness and inadequacy 
 of the doctrines of anthropology, and of the 
 collections by which these are sometimes illus- 
 trated. Facts selected to support a particular 
 view become a caricature of life as it really is.
 
 58 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 The limitation is entirely necessary, and in a 
 sense just ; but it becomes most unjust as soon 
 as ever the ' developmental series of primates,' 
 or the ' anthropological collection ' is taken as 
 an illuminating presentment of the nature of 
 man as man. Some photographs, some dried 
 masks of men, some stuffed skins of the higher 
 apes do these really help one much ? And 
 when you have climbed all the way from the 
 stuffed apes to the poor caricature of a man, 
 have you really jumped the step between the 
 quadrumana and Homo sapiens f Does your 
 inspection make the matter seem simple to 
 you ? If so, cross the street to the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum, and see what kind of 
 things this higher ape makes ; see what kind 
 of doors he puts to his churches ; see what 
 kind of cups and knives, to say nothing of 
 pictures and sculptures, he can construct. 
 You will have there within a small compass 
 enough to puff to the winds this silly doctrine 
 for it is nothing else but a babyish per- 
 version of Science this babyish doctrine that 
 man is really nothing more than a higher ape. 
 As soon as ever it pretends to be a complete 
 account of man, the thing is puerile and 
 accursed. But as long as it keeps within its
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 59 
 
 own sphere, and so is an effort, a halting 
 effort, going along against great difficulties, 
 to investigate a most obscure department of 
 phenomena, then it is right and praiseworthy. 
 The moment it professes to be a full account of 
 man, as soon as I am told that man differs from 
 the higher apes chiefly in the fact that he main- 
 tains the erect posture instead of one that is 
 partly so, then I say the thing is a curse, and 
 a sham, and a fraud. While it merely stops 
 short, there is no harm done, and something 
 is contributed to our knowledge. But stop- 
 ping short becomes a crime if you are asked to 
 take that short measure as an alternative for 
 the full knowledge. So much then with regard 
 to Naturalism as a creed. 
 
 Now we have only a few moments left in 
 which to speak of Naturalism as a scheme 
 of conduct. Here again let us make quite 
 sure that we are in diametrical opposition to 
 Naturalism. There is no room in that theory 
 for the first inkling of the doctrine of Grace, 
 the doctrine that God pours down into men's 
 hearts substantial life from above to make 
 them good, to make them strong. If ever, 
 therefore, in reading valuable treatises with 
 regard to human life from the natural point
 
 60 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 of view, which, I repeat, are lawful and 
 good so long as it is understood they are 
 departmental and insufficient when reading 
 these, you wonder whether you have not 
 found a complete account of man, remember 
 that you have to set against all that is 
 described in the order of nature the smallest 
 spark of grace. We used to be taught as 
 children that " Satan trembles when he sees 
 the weakest saint upon his knees." Well, in the 
 same way Naturalism, as a sufficient account 
 of man, goes all to pieces as soon as you 
 remember the poorest creature on his knees, 
 as soon as you remember how it was with 
 you when you really looked up to God for 
 His help. And since we have but little time 
 left, let me use that time to beg you not to 
 treat grace only as a matter of doctrine which 
 broadly distinguishes religion from everything 
 which is not religion, but to remember it as a 
 supply which is waiting that you may receive 
 it. I must not slide into the manner of one 
 of the sermons which you so often listen to 
 with immense profit, but this point comes 
 into my argument, as an argument. For if 
 Grace be a force, it is obvious that its pur- 
 pose is not to be thought about, but to be
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 61 
 
 used ; and those cannot hope to stand fast 
 against the most ordinary delusions of this 
 world, who are not themselves opening the 
 channels of their life wide to receive that 
 force in all the fulness with which God will 
 give it to them from time to time. Now 
 here we have a truth which is very strictly 
 in point with regard to some of our most 
 secular debates. I think that a time is coming 
 when there will be a great change in respect 
 to all those matters of debate. I think that 
 it has already come in some circles, and will 
 take possession of the world at large. We 
 shall no longer have a debate with Naturalism 
 concerning origins, concerning the nature of 
 things. We shall have a struggle with it 
 as a force attempting to turn the currents of 
 national life. What used to be materialism 
 in speculation is becoming faster every day 
 materialism in conduct and in politics. Now 
 the change that has taken place in the mental 
 scene is this. Of old I am speaking now 
 of 1880 when Mr. Huxley wrote constantly 
 to the Nineteenth Century, it was consciously 
 or unconsciously allowed that we all had the 
 same data of experience, and the only possible 
 question was about the proper explanation to
 
 62 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 be given of these data. It never seems to 
 have entered anybody's head, so far as I 
 remember and know but you will excuse me 
 for speaking with far too great assurance, 
 mainly for the sake of being short but I do 
 not think it was prominently put forward at 
 any rate, that it was at least possible that 
 men differed enormously in their spiritual 
 experience, in their experience of life. The 
 great arguments of Mr. Huxley were almost 
 all of them arguments intended to show that 
 our explanation of life was different from 
 his, and was wrong. How if the lives were 
 different ; how if we had got hold of different 
 data? And this is what we are "seeing more 
 and more clearly now : that men differ not so 
 much as was formerly thought merely in their 
 explanation of the facts before them, but that 
 they differ enormously in the world they have 
 entrance to, in the forces to which they have 
 actual access; so that the differences of ex- 
 planation, although they are important in 
 their way, are nothing in comparison with the 
 differences of actual experience. It follows 
 that if you do not wish to be a materialist 
 in speculation, if you do not wish to be 
 driven to the naturalistic conclusion in argu-
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 63 
 
 ment, you must see that you have the 
 materials for a spiritualistic conclusion grow- 
 ing up in your heart. That is the only cure 
 for doubt, to possess material for a refutation 
 of the doctrines of death in the perpetual 
 increase of a flood of active life. " Biters at 
 the fruits of death" where did I see men 
 thus described ? Biters at the fruits of death, 
 the Dead Sea apples how can they rightly 
 describe the laws of life ? How can they 
 avoid a materialistic conclusion when they 
 have only materialistic data in their own 
 hearts'? Let us think then of Grace, of the 
 life of the spirit in Christ, not as a notion 
 which we are to entertain, but as a force 
 which we are to receive ; and let us believe 
 that it rests with us to make the world and 
 society, under God's grace, yield that affirma- 
 tive response which we look for. The answer 
 which the human heart desires will never 
 come from waiting and gazing, from turning 
 over and over again the material sources of 
 knowledge. It is not in new discoveries 
 about animals, or in new and fresh wonders 
 of movement, that we have to find that 
 answer; but it is in the region of our own 
 consciousness that the stability of Christian
 
 64 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 faith lies. And in that region it belongs to us, 
 not merely to examine what we find there, 
 but to see that what we desire to find may 
 be there to be found. I shall have to leave 
 unsaid for lack of time what I wished to say 
 about the doctrine of free-will and heredity, 
 and I will attempt to combine it next time 
 with what I have to say about Naturalism 
 when it is regarded as a guide for the conduct 
 of society at large. 
 
 I shall venture to repeat and I am sure 
 you will excuse my anxiety to make it clear 
 that I am not in these lectures attempting 
 to describe or to resolve any difficulties which 
 belong to the relation between Science as such 
 and Religion ; but only to indicate differences 
 between Religion and Naturalism, by which 
 word I mean the doctrine that scientific in- 
 formation will do the work of Religion in 
 addition to its own.
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 CAN NATURALISM TAKE THE PLACE OF RELIGION 
 AS A GUIDE FOR SOCIAL PROGRESS?
 
 TAKING along with us the distinction be- 
 tween Science and Naturalism, we may say 
 that there are two regions of morals in which 
 Naturalism comes into conflict with Eeligion 
 and religious morality. The first is individual 
 conduct, and the second the conduct of society 
 as a whole. 
 
 With regard to the first, the doctrines of 
 heredity have actually been found to have a 
 tendency to discredit the conscious effort to 
 improve our own lives. They tend towards a 
 greater belief in necessity as governing our 
 actions, or else towards a readier submission 
 to impulse. With regard to this branch of 
 the subject, as I cannot do much work this 
 evening, I will take the unusual course of re- 
 ferring to a little paper of my own, which 
 expresses in a rough form a part of what I 
 would attempt to say. The paper is called 
 
 Science and Conduct, and is published by 
 67
 
 68 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ( ' 
 
 Messrs. Longmans. 1 The general conclusion 
 to which I am led with regard to individual 
 conduct is that the strictest doctrines of 
 heredity, legitimately drawn from natural 
 science, seem to leave us face to face with an 
 excess of different possibilities in individual 
 life ; so that, if only there is an agent within 
 us which can choose, there is abundant material 
 upon which the choice can be made. Nothing, 
 therefore, in the recent additions to our know- 
 ledge and they have been very great indeed 
 does anything to alter the condition of the 
 old problem, the old mystery, of free-will. So 
 far as that is concerned, the new knowledge 
 leaves us where we were, that is to say, face 
 to face with a problem in which argumentative 
 investigation makes no progress, but with 
 regard to which the moral sense within us bears 
 a clear witness, the witness to the existence of 
 the good the good in itself and the good for 
 us ; a witness to our being obliged by the 
 deepest interest of our lives to choose the good 
 and reject the evil. Indeed, as I have hinted 
 above, the philosophy of determinism is not 
 what really affects us, but rather the tempta- 
 
 1 Puzey House Papers, No. IV., price 6d. Longmans, 
 Green and Co.
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 69 
 
 tion to yield to impulse, which has no right to 
 call itself the law of our nature, to the exclusion 
 of conscience and of the interest of the 
 neighbour. 
 
 We pass on then to-night to some brief 
 discussion of social morals, as they seem to be 
 affected by Naturalism. Here we come to a 
 very plain issue indeed ; but before I attempt 
 any explanation of the matter before us, let me 
 make sure of giving one piece of good advice. 
 Eead Evolution and Ethics, the Romanes 
 Lecture given by T. H. Huxley in 1893. This, 
 with its breadth of view and exactness of 
 statement, even if its conclusions are not fully 
 what you would desire, is one of the best 
 correctives that could possibly be given to 
 the crude and over-bold Naturalistic state- 
 ments on public morals which have sometimes 
 been put forth. 
 
 The Christian idea of social progress comes 
 into conflict with Naturalism over the question 
 of natural selection. The method of improve- 
 ment which faith and our own hearts have 
 pointed out to us, has been expressed in the 
 Utilitarian philosophy as aiming at the greatest 
 good of the greatest number. You see that 
 I have chosen as a witness that philosophy
 
 70 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 which is generally supposed to give the 
 coldest view of morals. Even in this coldest 
 view we aim as near as possible at the good 
 of all, and that directly. 
 
 Our religious ministry is the effort to 
 make as many men as we can reach, good 
 and happy those who are weak and wicked 
 and frail as much as those who are of noble 
 instincts and great moral beauty. Our edu- 
 cation is by law universal ; its object is to 
 alter as much as possible the ignorance of 
 everybody in the direction of knowledge, 
 to instruct, to correct, to enlighten. Our 
 public health work has for its object to 
 keep as far as possible everybody alive as 
 long as possible. Our hospitals continue day 
 and night to mend the weakly-built frames 
 of the least healthy, to deliver the children 
 of the most ill-nourished and sometimes the 
 most unhappy mothers, to counteract and 
 beat off all the natural effects of hunger 
 and disease and darkness, and overcrowding 
 and vice and past neglect of proper means, 
 to the utmost extent. They work as if the 
 one object of medicine was to preserve the 
 spark of life, even where it burns most dimly, 
 and where in this world it must of necessity
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 71 
 
 have the narrowest future and the poorest 
 materials upon which to work. Medicine, 
 sanitation, education, literature, politics, re- 
 ligion are all moved by the same great motive 
 a motive which has its spring undoubtedly, 
 however little that spring may be discerned, in 
 the ineradicable conviction of the priceless 
 value of every single human soul, as such ; a 
 value which, since it is priceless in every case, 
 cannot be practically compared in any two cases. 
 The universal effort to preserve life, to in- 
 troduce light, in every individual, has in the 
 course of history met with opposition in two 
 quarters. First, there has been the opposition 
 presented by a one-sided and unpractical 
 spiritualism, which by reason of the very 
 preciousness of an immortal life has regarded 
 its exhibition in time as unimportant. And 
 now in our own days the effort of mercy is 
 opposed by a thorough-going materialism, 
 which in the interests of a physical organism, 
 such as the State is supposed to be, dis- 
 countenances that universal care for weak, 
 physical individuals which can only be based 
 upon a conviction of their spiritual equivalence 
 to the strong and fair. Such, nevertheless, is
 
 72 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 our religious and natural effort the effort to 
 succour the weak. 
 
 What is the contrasted object of a purely 
 Naturalistic development ? Natural develop- 
 ment finds its guide in natural selection or 
 the struggle for existence ; and this requires 
 for its progress precisely the elimination of all 
 those forms of life which cannot maintain 
 themselves according to the order of Nature. 
 The improvement of the whole is not only 
 fostered by the disappearance of the weak, but 
 it absolutely depends for its direction and its 
 velocity upon the velocity and the accuracy 
 with which that disappearance takes place. It 
 is strictly a method of improvement of the 
 whole by the elimination of the weaker parts, 
 and from a Naturalistic point of view, every 
 interference with the law of competition is 
 an act of treason to the cause of progress. 
 Let me make sure that this statement is not 
 given too wide an application. The care of 
 the young who by themselves must perish in 
 every case, is by no means an interference 
 with the law of physical progress, as seen by 
 the barest Naturalism. It is a result of natural 
 selection, or may be represented as such. And
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE?' 73 
 
 yet even in this very fact may we not see, as 
 Mr. Drummond saw in his book, The Ascent 
 of Man, (a book I venture to think of much 
 more scientific value than his earlier work, 
 Natural Law in the Spiritual World) may 
 we not see in this very emergence of altruism 
 within the close mesh of natural necessity, a 
 sign that the law of love lies behind, sometimes 
 intrudes into, and may always transcend and 
 modify, the law of Nature, of hunger, and 
 competition itself ? In the matter of parentage, 
 the unselfish devotion of the parent to the 
 child is part of the condition under which 
 alone the parent can find a representation in 
 the coming generations. What is immediately 
 a piece of self-sacrifice is, in the long run, a 
 part, not exactly of self-preservation, but of 
 self-repetition, and of the preservation of a 
 strain in the species. It is a part of the con- 
 dition of survival under the law of natural 
 selection. May it not therefore well be, that 
 our own care for the weaker members of our 
 general body, the body of the nation, our 
 own care for weaker races which come into 
 contact with our own, is, even in the view 
 of an enlightened natural science, a part of 
 some widest process, of most general and most
 
 74 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 permanent self-improvement? But, putting 
 that aside and indeed the notion needs a 
 jealous examination we have a clear contra- 
 diction between the Christian procedure of 
 succouring the weak, and the Naturalistic 
 counsel of letting the weak perish. According 
 to the Naturalistic view, it is precisely the 
 prodigal for whose return no bridge should be 
 built. If he can himself pass the dark water 
 of unaided reformation, let him thus make 
 good his right to rejoin the company of pro- 
 gress. According to Naturalism, it is precisely 
 the hasty temper, the frail honesty, the moral 
 imbecility, the ungovernable appetite, which 
 ought to be allowed to work themselves out 
 unchecked to their inevitable end, in the 
 isolation, or the lunacy, or the early physical 
 death of the individual. With regard to 
 education, the sources of knowledge ought 
 to be spread open to all ; but I suppose that 
 ignorance ought to be allowed to reach its 
 full depth in those who have a tendency to 
 reject knowledge ; for nothing but a lowering 
 of the general standard can, it would seem, 
 arise from spending time over forcing up a 
 step or two of the ladder of knowledge all 
 those who will never reach its average middle
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 75 
 
 point. But in this matter of education, I do 
 not think that Naturalism has as yet made 
 any very definite statement. 
 
 With regard to sanitation and medicine, the 
 case is perfectly plain. The interest of the 
 race can only be hindered by the preservation 
 in life of weak individuals, and, above all, by 
 the maintenance of their undesirable offspring. 
 Vice given its full swing will soon reduce to 
 sterility the vicious elements of our society. 
 Alcoholism rapidly wipes out those constitu- 
 tions which are not able to become immune 
 to it by practice. Only give Nature a free 
 swing, and we should have a society made up 
 of individuals thoroughly able to cope either 
 with the inclination to drink and excess, or else 
 with their evil effects evil being taken to 
 mean what is hostile to physical vigour. Take 
 another and a still wider view. The doctrine 
 of natural selection taken alone forbids mercy 
 and consideration for the weaker races with 
 which our nation comes in contact. We move 
 as by a law of Nature, as the lemmings 
 move towards the Baltic ; there is no room 
 for conscience in considering the fate of those 
 we sweep from the face of the earth ; the 
 lower races must needs fade before the higher,
 
 76 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 and the higher is simply that which is most 
 fit to eat up the land. As in the interior 
 organisation of a nation, so in the manage- 
 ment of its outward movements, everything 
 which interferes with what is boldly called 
 the law of Nature is treason to the true 
 interests of progress. So Naturalism would 
 seem to teach us. 
 
 Such then, very partially expressed, is the 
 conflict which may be raised in the name of 
 natural selection ; but this is not all which 
 Naturalism has to say. There is another mode 
 of improving the physical soundness of society 
 besides that of the elimination of the unfit; 
 there is care about the production of the fit. 
 This care would take the form of a careful 
 selection in the matter of marriage if the 
 sacred name of marriage could still be given 
 to an institution which would thus have lost 
 all that personal spontaneity which belongs to 
 its present definition. 
 
 Here then are the two branches of the 
 alternative process for social advance, proposed 
 instead of our Christian one of taking the best 
 care we can of each other and ourselves. What 
 can be said in reply ? Is there nothing to 
 give us pause before we accept the new plans ?
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 77 
 
 Is there nothing to be said, on the lines which 
 they point out, for our old Christian policy ? 
 Alas, that our answer must be weakened at 
 the outset by the failure to point to a Christian 
 polity in actual existence. It may give us an 
 argumentative advantage to say that the Chris- 
 tian plan ought not to be rejected before it 
 has been seriously tried ; but at what a cost in 
 the region of conscience do we avail ourselves 
 of that advantage in discussion ! It is never- 
 theless fearfully true that this plan of universal 
 altruism, of the care for the weak by the 
 strong, of the care of the ignorant by the 
 wise, of the care for the bad by those who 
 know the power of grace or who have the 
 advantage of moral strength, of the care for 
 the poor and low national institutions on the 
 part of those national institutions which are 
 powerful and rich, is as yet a dream and an 
 ideal. Only in the region of medicine the 
 region in which the opposition of Naturalism 
 might be most direct only here can we point 
 to anything which advances seriously towards 
 the model of the Christian state. Let us 
 thank God for that great exception. On the 
 whole, though, we have to set in contrast with 
 the dream of Naturalism that dream which
 
 78 *IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 
 
 has so powerful an advocate within everybody's 
 selfish breast, and so large a measure of fulfil- 
 ment in the actual movement of our selfish 
 society against this dream, if it must still be 
 called a dream, we have to set only a rival 
 dream, an aspiration of Christian altruism. 
 
 What has our aspiration, as an aspiration, to 
 show against that other ? It has this in the 
 first place to say that it exists. The mere 
 existence of such an ideal in our breasts is 
 a fact not to be despised. According to the 
 measures of Science, it has to be accounted 
 for like other things. Whence did it come ? 
 Here we find in a new form the dilemma which 
 I invited you to consider in the first lecture. 
 This aspiration, this hope, this desire, this 
 sense of the beauty of a care for all, is either 
 natural or non-natural. If it is itself the 
 result of the movement of natural selection, 
 what reason have we to suppose that it is not 
 at least as respectable, and as worthy of 
 obedience, as the natural movement of the 
 mother to save the life for it is always a 
 rescue of her helpless infant ; the natural 
 movement of the male to spare and protect the 
 muscular feebleness of the wife, who by her 
 muscular feebleness rules his life and his home ?
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 79 
 
 If then the movements of pity and of mercy are 
 planted in us by Nature, they must be planted 
 in us for obedience and not for destruction. 
 
 Or will you say they are the mere vestiges 
 of a state which is already out of date, and 
 therefore are doomed to disappear, so that 
 it is of advantage to us that they should dis- 
 appear rapidly rather than slowly ? We have 
 physical vestigial organs, the presence of which 
 points, as it would seem, to a former state of 
 human organisms when those organs were use- 
 ful. It would be no disadvantage were they 
 now finally to disappear. Shall we say that 
 mercy, pity, and love are such vestigial moral 
 attributes, and that as they are fading, and 
 fading with accelerated velocity in the higher 
 races, we shall be better off when they have 
 faded altogether ? If you can ask this, I will 
 ask in reply whether it is the fact that these 
 motives are weakest in those societies which 
 have, according to your own measure of pro- 
 gress, reached relatively the highest level. 
 And I would ask further how it came to pass 
 that mercy and pity could possibly have been 
 more useful than they are now, in one of those 
 earlier states of society in which the contest 
 for existence must be, if not more actually, yet
 
 80 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 much more evidently, acute, than it is in tne 
 highly- organised state in which we live a 
 state in which it is perfectly plain that the 
 crippled musician or the epileptic military com- 
 mander has a place of importance which he could 
 never have justified physically by the mere 
 contests of muscle and appetite ; for indeed 
 neither would have escaped extinction in those 
 earlier societies in which music was a matter 
 of muscular energy, and strategy was confined 
 to the use of a club. So much for the ' ves- 
 tigial ' suggestion. The aspiration must have 
 come from somewhere. If it is not natural it 
 must be extra-natural, and in that case our 
 Naturalism falls as a whole to the ground ; for 
 Naturalism let me repeat it once again is not 
 the recognition of the forces of Nature, but 
 the allegation that there are no forces besides. 
 After all, it is perhaps in the genuine answer 
 to this dilemma that our principal defence lies. 
 This movement of pity and mercy belongs, we 
 have to say, to the very perfection of our 
 nature. It is indeed the best thing we have. 
 How can we give it up on the plea of making 
 the whole society better \ Is the whole society 
 worth preserving at the cost of the pity and 
 mercy of each one of us ? Nay, is the whole
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 81 
 
 society worth preserving if it has not pity and 
 mercy within itself to be preserved ? And 
 how can that be rich in mercy and pity which 
 has found its perfection through the rejection 
 of those motives, which flourishes just in 
 proportion as mercy and pity have been in- 
 operative ? In fact we come back to the old 
 truth that the moral sense, if it be not supreme, 
 is nothing at all ; that supremacy belongs to its 
 nature, and that if we are without the moral 
 sense, we may as well put aside all problems, 
 all care, all attempted direction of our life, 
 whether as individuals or as a community. To 
 put it briefly, if the moral sense is a reality, 
 we cannot discard from it the element of pity ; 
 and if the moral sense is a delusion it is 
 impossible to say why we should endeavour to 
 preserve or to develop society. What busi- 
 ness is it of ours if it goes to pieces ? In fact 
 the plea for ' nature ' proves nothing at all, or 
 it proves a great deal too much. It proves 
 that in any genuine sense of the word ' inter- 
 est/ any sense having reference to conscious- 
 ness, we have no real interest at all in the 
 preservation of our race ; and if it perishes 
 from the preservation of the weak and the 
 debased, that is no affair of ours. Take the
 
 82 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 other side, and see how far it is from this infer- 
 tility of conclusion. Take it that we owe an 
 entire reverence to the dictates of love ; that 
 the moral sense by its very existence is not 
 only existent, but also necessarily sovereign ; 
 that it is indeed the witness within us to the 
 better order of which at present we form an 
 imperfect part. Let it rule and have its own. 
 It will be able to take all advantage of the 
 teachings of physical knowledge, without sub- 
 mitting itself to merely physical limitations. 
 To be a sovereign is not to be without servants, 
 or to fail to use their powers to the utmost. 
 Christianity rightly asserting itself will use 
 Science as medicine uses it, to relieve pain 
 wherever pain exists, to drive off evil, whether 
 in the physical sphere or in the spiritual. It 
 will frankly recognise all goodness of health, 
 of cleanness, of fresh air ; it will not pause to 
 question whether these things are or are not 
 really superior to their opposites ; it will trust 
 its instinct and take all that for granted. It 
 will thank God for the perfume of flowers, and 
 attempt to bring the pure joys even of sense 
 within the reach of the disinherited. It will 
 seek to open the sources of knowledge to all ; 
 but it will seek to introduce into the darkest
 
 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE?' 83 
 
 mind the small supply for which alone it has 
 capacity. It will trust to the training of the 
 individual for the enlargement of capacity, and 
 not to the mechanical elimination of the small. 
 It will hope for swifter harvests than may be 
 reached by the slow advance effected through 
 the destruction of generations. Within society 
 it will believe in the possibility of the direct 
 action of the moral environment, and it has, as 
 I could show if there were time, abundant 
 ground, according to the tests of natural science, 
 for retaining this belief. 
 
 Time may perhaps serve for a short exhibi- 
 tion of the grounds of that conviction. It is 
 of necessity addressed chiefly to those who 
 happen to be conversant with the literature of 
 evolutionary doctrine. In the individual life- 
 history there is little, if any, ground for believing 
 in the inheritance of characters acquired within 
 the lifetime of an individual. Here it is plain, 
 that I dismiss in a sentence a very large body 
 of alleged facts and of doctrine. Take it 
 provisionally that in the life of an animal or a 
 man, we have no proof of the inheritance of 
 acquired characters. If this be so, natural 
 selection, and natural selection alone, is the 
 guiding factor of evolution the guiding factor,
 
 84 'IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 
 
 I say, not the only motive factor. Use-inherit- 
 ance (a useful name invented by Mr. Ball 
 Platt), the direct effect of the environment, the 
 Lamarckian factors under whatever name they 
 re-appear, must be considered as at the very 
 least without proof at present. But does this 
 hold good of society as an organism ? Not at 
 all. Indeed it is because of the discrepancy in 
 this respect that we may feel sure that the very 
 notion of society as an organism is at present 
 in an altogether unsatisfactory state. It requires 
 examination from top to toe, and if it were 
 revised in no other respect, it must at least be 
 revised in this. For in society as a whole 
 there is a most obvious and undeniable inherit- 
 ance of acquired character. We have ourselves 
 inherited from the Roman State (a social 
 organism which has passed away) a number 
 of the most important social characteristics of 
 our national life. The whole of the modern 
 European societies have inherited in immensely 
 various degrees parts of the Roman municipal 
 law, which are vigorously active as factors of 
 national life to this day. From the extinct 
 England of before the Conquest we have a not 
 less important inheritance wrought into the 
 substance of our social life ; nor are we yet
 
 'IS THERE A EELIGION OF NATURE?' 85 
 
 bereft of some of those activities and functions 
 which our partly Christian society has inherited 
 from the once undivided Church. The truth 
 is that there exists in society as an organism a 
 bond, a road of connexion, a nexus as the 
 phrase runs, apart from the nexus of which 
 physiology takes account. In physiology there 
 may probably be no inheritance of acquired 
 characters ; in sociology it is certain that there 
 is, through the connecting link of institutions. 
 Institutions, if we give that name its widest 
 meaning, compose a vast system of continuous 
 mental life, comparable to the continuous life 
 which Weismann divines as the basis of animal 
 existence, and very much more important as 
 controlling the actual form of a social policy. 
 Now in this difference with respect to the 
 inheritance of the acquired is a fact which 
 entirely upsets the smooth level analogy 
 between the animal and society which is too 
 easily taken for granted. It is not, however, 
 my present task to criticise the conception of 
 society as an organism, but to affirm the 
 possibility of directly influencing its life ; for 
 this is the charter of morals and of religion. 
 But supposing for a moment we were wrong
 
 86 'IS THERE A RELIGION OP NATURE ? ' 
 
 in this ; supposing a further knowledge should 
 show the inheritance of acquired characters to 
 be as little a truth in society as it is in physical 
 life ; will the case for morals and Religion be 
 practically I do not say ideally, but prac- 
 tically weaker ? For my part I do not think 
 so at all. Of two things, one. Either moral 
 improvements are inherited together with 
 moral disadvantages, or else neither improve- 
 ment nor advantage is inherited at all. If they 
 are inherited, this gives us a new motive for 
 taking care that in the individual life and in 
 the generation with which we are immediately 
 concerned, there shall be the greatest possible 
 moral good, and the smallest possible dis- 
 advantage to be handed on. If, on the con- 
 trary, moral good is not inherited, then moral 
 disadvantage is not inherited either, and each 
 generation has a clean slate on which to write 
 down what is good and to leave out what is 
 bad. In either case the hope and the task of 
 morals and religion remain unquestionable, 
 and bereft of no measure of hope by any addi- 
 tion to or modification of our knowledge of 
 development. 
 
 I will not attempt any more to-night. I
 
 ' IS THERE A RELIGION OF NATURE ? ' 87 
 
 shall be very grateful if these words have done 
 anything to stimulate a greater interest in the 
 wonderful advance of modern Science, any- 
 thing to reassure my brothers in their reliance 
 upon Christian truth, and their vigorous 
 exercise of the life of Grace. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE HEART OF JESUS 
 
 Being Addresses upon the Present Reality of the Passion, given 
 in St. Paul's Cathedral at the Midday Services in Holy Week, and 
 at the Three Hours' Devotion of Good Friday, 1901. Small post 
 8vo, cloth boards, Is. Qd. 
 
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