religion and science are received with a certain dislike, it is due
partly to the unwisdom with which they are sometimes made. Prof. H.
Drummond speaks of the dislike as general.[1]

If this is so, I, as a "reconciler," can only ask for indulgence, hoping
that grace may be extended to me on the ground of having something to
say on the subject that has not yet been considered.

Nor, as regards the impatience of the public, can I admit that there is
only fault on one side. In the first place, it will not be denied that
some writers, delighted with the vast, and apparently boundless, vision
that the discovery (in its modern form) of Evolution opened out to them,
did incautiously proceed, while surveying their new kingdom, to assert
for it bounds that stretch beyond its legitimate scope.


[Footnote 1: In the Introduction to his well-known book, "Natural Law in
the Spiritual World."]

Religionists, on the other hand, imagining, however wrongly, that the
erroneous extension was part of the true scientific doctrine, attacked
the whole without discrimination.

While such a misapprehension existed, it was inevitable that writers
anxious alike for the dignity of science and the maintenance of
religion, should step in to point out the error, and effect a
reconciliation of claims which really were never in conflict.

It is hardly the fault of "religionists" that it was at first supposed
that one _could_ not hold the doctrine of evolution without denying a