For the demands of Reason--as none knew better than good Bishop
Butler--must be and ought to be satisfied. And therefore; when a popular
war arises between the reason of any generation and its Theology: then it
behoves the ministers of religion to inquire, with all humility and godly
fear, on which side lies the fault; whether the Theology which they
expound is all that it should be, or whether the reason of those who
impugn it is all that it should be.

For me, as--I trust--an orthodox priest of the Church of England, I
believe the Theology of the National Church of England, as by law
established, to be eminently rational as well as scriptural. It is not,
therefore, surprising to me that the clergy of the Church of England,
since the foundation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century,
have done more for sound physical science than the clergy of any other
denomination; or that the three greatest natural theologians with which
I, at least, am acquainted--Berkeley, Butler, and Paley--should have
belonged to our Church. I am not unaware of what the Germans of the
eighteenth century have done. I consider Goethe's claims to have
advanced natural Theology very much over-rated: but I do recommend to
young clergymen Herder's _Outlines of the Philosophy of the History of
Man_ as a book--in spite of certain defects--full of sound and precious
wisdom. Meanwhile it seems to me that English natural Theology in the
eighteenth century stood more secure than that of any other nation, on
the foundation which Berkeley, Butler, and Paley had laid; and that if
our orthodox thinkers for the last hundred years had followed steadily in
their steps, we should not be deploring now a wide, and as some think
increasing, divorce between Science and Christianity.

But it was not so to be. The impulse given by Wesley and Whitfield
turned--and not before it was needed--the earnest minds of England almost