A RECONCILIATION.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1923, Page 1

A RECONCILIATION.

SCIENTISTS’ -PREDICTIONS

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION LONDON, Sept- 10.

An ultimate reconciliation between religion and modern science was the keynote of addresses given to Liverpool audiences on Sunday in connection with the British Association, particularly by Canon Barnes, preaching at the Lady Chapel in the new Liverpool Cathedral, and Sir Oliver Lodge, in addresses at the Presbyterian Church at Sefton Park. Canon Barnes said : “We must never forget that all human activity, including science and religion, rested upon improved and improvable assumptions, hut the modern world demanded that faith should be reasonable, and not blind. Science had not only created a new cosmogony, Which was a background for religion, but had given the world a now conception of what was meant by reasonable faith. Young men and women who had had a scientific training at the universities complained bitterly that they could not get adequate religious teaching. They had no more desire for an undogmatic religion than for hazy science, but they demanded that- religious dogma should be taught with the same frankness and the same readiness. What Knglish religion now wanted, he said, was the evangelistic touch of men like the Wesleys, combined with the outlook upon the world which modern science had constructed. The reverence for truth of science could he made an inspiration for pious souls. Sir Oliver Lodge said that, 50 years ago. there was supposed to ho a con flict between religion and science. “I attended meetings of the British Association when Huxley and Tyndall announced their great discoveries,” ho said, “and when they indicated their views of the universe. It seemed hardly possible that one system of truth was not in opposition to the other system of truth which we call religion. Mistakes have been made on both sides. During the past 50 years, there lias been a revelation of the infinitely big and the infinitely small. In both stars and atoms we have found the same system of law and order. Science also showed mail to he sometimes evil and ugly. Man as a. newcomer on this planet was hampered Inins animal ancestry, hut endowed with free will. Tf lie is related on bis bodily side to tiie animals, man on bis mental spiritual side bad an incipeiit kinship with the Deity. When the work of development was complete, llio progress of ages of humanity would show that the product was worth all the labour, sacrifice and pain which had been necessary to bring it out. We are immortal beings. We shall see this development, and rejoice in if in the fullness of time.”