DR. BARNES, OF BIRMINGHAM.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19141, 26 October 1927, Page 11

DR. BARNES, OF BIRMINGHAM.

TO THS SDITOK Of THE PBESS. Sir,—With "True Eeligion" as defined in the only way in which it is defined in the Bible, Science has not nor ever can have any quarrel. "True Eeligion, and undefined before God is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." Everyone will accept that definition, though I have never heard it emphasised from the pulpit. But with the Church and the Theologians it is no use blinking the fact that .Science has many quarrels. Mr Perry says very kindly thai the Church is not opposed" to evolution—indeed it retains an open mind upon it. In his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered at Leeds on August olst, 1927, Sir Arthur Keith says: "In a brief hour I have attempted to answer a question of momentous importance to us all. "What is man's origin? Was Darwin right when he said that .man, under the action of biological forces which can be observed and measured, has been raised from a place amongst anthropoid apes to that which he now occupies? The answer is 'Yes,' and in returning this verdict I speak but as foreman of the jury—a jury which has been empannelled from men who have devoted a lifetime to weighing evidence. To the best of my ability I have avoided, in laying before you the evidence on which our verdict was found, the role of special pleader, being content to follow Darwin's own example—let the truth speak for itself." ("Nature," September 3rd, 1027, page 21.) In another place in the same address (page IS) Sir Arthur says: "On our modest scale of reckoning, that gives man the respectable antiquity of about one million years." The Theologians preach—it is indeed a keynote of their teaching—that man has fallen. Evolution says that man has risen. I would not say that the Theologians now teach it, but it is the first marginal note in the Authorised Version of the Bible that the world was created in the year 4004 8.0. Sir Arthur Keith's estimate of

the time since man diverged from the ape is one million vears. One says flack, the other savs white. What is the use of saying there is no discrepancy? What black is trving to do is t" say that it is white j'f you look at it in the right-' war—with spectacles sufficiently coloured." Another keynote —though of course the Church does not say so in so many words—is that this earth is the centre of things. The whole of its teaching centres round that idea. Science on the other hand says that this earth is an insignificant speck. Agaia fc*%enoo savs white, the theologians say Mack. Why soy—is it indeed .honest' to say—they agree-' They don't agree. I have referred to these two discrepancies because the former of them was mentioned in a recent sermon by Dr. Barnes (vido telegram in daily papers about two months ago), and the latter is the subject of some remarks by Dean Inge, but there are others scattered about Theology and Science which could be cited. In speaking of them the Dean savs ("Science, Religion,, and Reality," 'page 360): 'Only let us hear no more of clergymen thanking God that Theology and Science are now reconciled, for unhappily it is not true." Indeed it is not true, and it is becoming more and more untrue as theologians from Tenessee and elsewhere try in these latter days to force upon us mediaeval ideas and traditions of a bygone age. As regards the rest of Mr' Perry's remarks, I know little of St. Francis, but it does not seem as if ho could have been wholely holy or lie wouldn't have been dirtv'; but could anything that Dr. Barnes" might say of Theology be possibly worse than the most appalling conception of the Sublime Designer which is contained in the Athanasian creed, viz., "And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, andl they that have done evil into everlasting fire. Thus is the Catholic faith which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved. It is this creed which the AngloCatholics would like to see incorporated as an essential into the new Prayer Book (vide "Church Standard, August 26th, 1927, page 105), so that thev may refer to it as having the authority of the Church behind it and hold it "over the heads of credulous women. And yet one of them is criticising Dr. Barnes. It mav be that Dr. Barnes may be horesv hunted out of the Church. It the Anglo-Catholics and the Fundamentalists get together they may make his life unendurable. But it so it will, I think, be a very sorry day for the Church. We are no longer in the davs of Galileo. By its achievements Science has justified! its right to be heard, and the Church will not only lose the sympathy of tliw and many other great scholars within her own borders, but will stir up the active hostility of the educated laity It believe I am right in saying that Dr. Barnes—if not the only Church of England clergyman—is one of only two or three such who are Fellows ot the Roval Society, though of course I am not suggesting that the Society would take any official notice of it. I do not think' it would. All honour then to Dr. Barnes and to Dean Inge, who, by their writings and speeches and sermons, may save the Church from the rocks upon which it bids fair to be wrecked. It is not assertion and dogmatic theolocv which is going to transform the world. These mav have had their .place in the ' world!'s evolution at a time when they ,-nuld not be contradicted. It is Christ's life and His ethical teaching --Yours,-etc., -^j^^