different from that which the more impulsive spokesmen of science anticipated. It is not too much to assert that we are at the present time entering on an era in which we are about to witness one of the most striking revolutions in the aspect of the conflict which has taken place since it first began.

There are two movements of opinion which have deeply affected the inner religious life of the present century. The first has its cause in what may be called the new revelation of the doctrine of evolution; the other has received its impetus from the historic criticism of the Bible by various workers from Strauss to Renan. Whatever may be the opinion of individuals there can be little doubt that the tendency of both these movements has been generally considered to be on the whole profoundly anti-religious. There have been indeed many enlightened minds so far affected as to regard the new knowledge as having definitely and finally closed the controversy between Religion and Science by the annihilation of one of the antagonists. Nevertheless, when all due allowance is made for these movements of opinion there is a tendency of the time which ought not to escape the notice of an observant mind. Some conception of the direction in which we are travelling begins to shape itself when the present is contrasted with the past. Perhaps one of the first things which arrest attention on a comparison of the condition of thought outside the Churches on religious questions at the present and at the beginning of the century is the disappearance of that condition of mind represented at the period of the French Revolution by the assured and aggressive objector to religion. It is not that the dogmas of religion are more widely adhered to, but that this state of mind has been to a large

extent superseded in America, Germany, and England, but more particularly in the last-mentioned country by a remarkable earnestness, a general deep-lying religiousness-using the word in its broadest sense, for the disposition is often not less marked amongst those openly rejecting the dogmas of religion — which is perhaps without a parallel in any previous age.

It would be a great mistake to view now as representative of the time the aggressive and merely destructive form of unbelief which finds expression in England in opinions like those of the late Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, and in America in the writings and addresses of Colonel Ingersoll. Even with regard to the views of the new party of Agnostics, representing what may be called unbelief in a passive state, a current of change may be discerned in progress. The militant onslaughts of so cultured a representative as Professor Huxley, the founder of the party, do not find the response in men's minds they would have found at a previous time. They are, almost unconsciously, recognised as belonging to a phase of thought beyond which the present generation feels itself, in some way, to have moved. The general mind, so often more scientific than our current science, seems to feel that there is something wrong in the attitude of science towards this subject of religion, that the most persistent and universal class of phenomena connected with human society cannot be thus lightly disposed of, and that our religious systems must have some unexplained function to perform in the evolution which society is undergoing, and on a scale to correspond with the magnitude of the phenomena.

This ill-defined general feeling has found more active expression in individuals. The movement of a certain class of minds towards the Church of Rome, the most conservative and uncompromising of all the Churches, which began in England in the middle of the century, and which has continued in some degree down to the present time, is not to be considered merely as a religious incident; it is of deep sociological import. Even the tendency, visible at the present time amongst another class of minds, to seek cover under the vague shadows of the super-rational in Theosophy and kindred forms of belief, has a certain significance which will not escape the attention of the student of social phenomena. It is but the outward expression in another form of the same movement affecting a different type of mind. It was, probably, an overstatement on the part of one of the leaders of the Comtists in England to say recently that "the net result of the whole negative attack on the Gospel has perhaps been to deepen the moral hold of Christianity on society." The opinion, nevertheless, represents the imperfect expression of a truth towards which the present generation is slowly feeling its way.

We have, undoubtedly, during the century, made progress in these matters. The direction may appear as yet uncertain, but all the indications denote a definite and unmistakable advance of some kind. The condition which the social mind has reached may be tentatively described as one of realisation, more or less unconscious, that religion has a definite function to perform in society, and that it is a factor of some kind in the social evolution which is in progress. But as to what that function is, where it begins, where it ends, and what place religious beliefs are destined to fill in the future, science has given us no indication.

But it is now when we turn to the domain which 1 "The Future of Agnosticism," by Mr. Frederic Harrison, Fortnightly Review, January 1889.

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science has made her own that the outlines and proportions of the coming change begin to be distinguished. The time is certainly not far distant when she must look back with surprise, if not, indeed, with some degree of shamefacedness, to the attitude in which she has for long addressed herself to one of the highest problems in the history of life. The definition of the laws which have shaped, and are still shaping, the course of progress in human society is the work of science, no less than it has been her work to discover the laws which have controlled the course of evolution throughout life in all the lower stages. But the spirit in which she has addressed herself to the one task is widely different from that in which she has undertaken the other. To her investigations in biology, science has brought a single-minded devotion to the truth, a clear judgment, and a mind absolutely unfettered by prejudice or bias: the splendid achievements of the century in this department of knowledge are the result. But when, in the ascending scale of life, she has reached man, the spirit in which her investigations have been continued is entirely different. She finds him emerging from the dim obscurity of a brute-like existence possessing two endowments which mark him out for a great future, namely his reason and his social capacities. Like all that have come before him he is engaged in a fierce and endless struggle for the means of existence; and he now takes part in this struggle not only against his fellows but in company with them against other social groups. He grows ever more and more social, and forms himself into clans and organised tribal groups. From the beginning science finds him under the sway of forces new to her, and with one of the strongest of these forces she herself at a very early stage comes into conflict. He holds beliefs which she asserts

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have no foundation in reason; and his actions are controlled by strange sanctions which she does not acknowledge. The incidents and events connected with these beliefs occupy, however, a great part of his life, and begin to influence his history in a marked manner. develops into nations and attains to a certain degree of civilisation; but these beliefs and religions appear to grow with his growth and to develop with his development. A great part of his history continues to be filled with the controversies, conflicts, social movements, and wars connected with them. Great social systems arise in which he reaches a high degree of civilisation, which come into conflict and competition with each other, and which develop and decline like organic growths. But with the life and development of these his religions are evidently still intimately connected; individual character is deeply affected; and the course of history and the whole character of social development continue to be profoundly influenced by these religious systems.

We live at a time when science counts nothing insignificant. She has recognised that every organ and every rudimentary organ has its utilitarian history. Every phase and attribute of life has its meaning in her eyes; nothing has come into existence by chance. What then are these religious systems which fill such a commanding place in man's life and history? What is their meaning and function in social development? To ask these questions is to find that a strange silence has fallen upon science. She has no answer. Her attitude towards them has been curious in the extreme, and widely different from that in which she has regarded any other of the phenomena of life. From an early stage in her career we find that she has been engaged in a personal quarrel with these religions, which has de