Indeed, they are
palpable and conspicuous in the mutual pressure of science and faith.
For, on the one hand science has made unthinkable the old-world
conception of a three-storeyed Universe, constructed by an artificer
God, who suddenly awoke from an eternity of idleness to make Heaven,
Earth, and Hell--a conception involving a King of kings, enthroned like
an eastern monarch, and sending forth His ministering spirits, or
appointing His angel deputies to direct and govern at His beck. Or if it
be said that never, except in the ages of primeval simplicity, or
amongst later generations living under primeval conditions? has such a
conception been entertained, it would be difficult for the "broadest"
Churchman to say what has been, put in its place. It is vain to remind
us how later Christianity has patronised nebular hypotheses and the
doctrine of evolution. For these give no definite substitute whatever
for the old story, that Elohim "spoke, and it was done--he commanded,
and it stood fast." Whence the fiery mists by the rotation and cooling
of which the worlds were slowly evolved? We are told that the same
process is going on now within the ken of astronomers. But does any one
suppose that in those realms of space God is evoking something out of
nothing, or saying "be," and "there is"? No; we are assured that these
fiery mists are formed by the collision of misguided orbs; and we are
even asked--or, at least we _were_ asked--to believe that this process
must go on until all systems are agglomerated in one orb, to be
ultimately congealed into stone.
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