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answers exist, but not at present for human beings. They are known to God, and sometimes a light from Him gives us a momentary glimpse of deep meanings which we very dimly see, but which because of the boundless side of our nature are not altogether dark to us. With this we must be content, and I think we are so made as to be really far more satisfied to know that God is not just like ourselves, but that "His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways than our ways," than we could possibly be if He were only what the mind of man could altogether grasp and understand. Because of our human limita tions, we can only know of Him so much as He teaches us by human means, human language, and a human life; and in later chapters I shall try and help you to understand what great things our Heavenly Father can tell us about Himself, even under these restrictions. He is not daunted by them; He uses them to make Himself known to us.

Before entering upon this side of our experience, however, there is a great deal to be said about a different one which is most interesting and most instructive and which we shall find leads us naturally on to the other.

CHAPTER III

THE SCIENTIFIC WAY OF REGARDING NATURE

AND MAN

"Read Nature. Nature is a friend to Truth."

YOUNG.

AMONG the different ways of looking at the world at large enumerated in Chapter I., you will remember that of science was mentioned, and I defined science as "the accurate and orderly knowledge of natural things." We must now go more particularly into this scientific view of nature and man, and see within what region of our whole life its way of looking at matters is valid, (that is holds good,) and its principles and methods are and ought to be the ruling ones.

Your own experience of learning must have taught you that when we wish to acquire accurate and orderly knowledge, the first necessity is to limit our field of study. For instance, in order to obtain a thorough knowledge of any period of history, say the reign of Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria, we

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17

have to confine our attention for a time to that period. Afterwards we may, and if we wish to understand the period in relation to the rest of history we must, widen our view and see what led up to, and what resulted from, the tendencies, events, and characters which mark the special period, but to begin with we have to leave all but the period itself on one side.

Just as we can take a period in history for our study, so in science we may take for the same purpose one branch, such as biology (the study of life), physics (the study of nonliving nature), chemistry (the study of the different "elements" which build up the substances we see and touch). These branches of science are themselves subdivided; for instance, physics comprises astronomy, heat, light, electricity, mechanics and various other subjects, and though they are intimately connected, each requires a special line of study and experiment to itself. The methods and instruments of scientific research have in these days been brought to so great a pitch of perfection, that each branch and even each subdivision of a branch of science opens out possibilities of knowledge enough to take up the whole time and energy of many trained

C

observers and reasoners. Consequently what has been called "specialisation" in scientific work (the devoting of exclusive attention to some one portion of it,) has become more and more a necessity. This fact, like most others, has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that specialisation makes possible, and to some extent easy, that minute observation of details without which exactness in knowledge cannot be had, and which is rewarded by important discoveries, many of which are of the greatest practical use. The disadvantages are that specialists are apt to think too exclusively of their own field of study, allowing it to take up more than its rightful share in their view of the world in general. This makes them slow and sometimes unable to see things in a large and wideminded way. You remember the old saying that some people "can't see the wood for the trees. It is simply a picturesque way of stating that those who are too much taken up with details are apt to miss the whole of which the details are part. All regions of study are open to this danger, that of natural science perhaps most of all, because in it the details are so wonderful and engrossing, and demand such minuteness and patience of observation

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that it seems almost impossible to get beyond them. And yet, in spite of the rich variety of facts contained in every branch and subbranch of science, the great whole into which they all enter, the entire field of science itself is but one of the ways in which even human beings can look at the universe and man. want to put before you the principles and methods which are distinctive of this one way.

I

You will remember that several times I have mentioned "the boundless side of our nature." That implies of course (and so far my endeavour has chiefly been to make you realise it,) a bounded side. It is with this alone that science is concerned, and consequently it is itself subject to strict limitations. Everything with which it deals has a beginning and an end, and is therefore temporal. Everything has a position and is therefore in space, whether it be our own bodies or the earth on which we live, or the whole solar system, or the vast stellar system of which the solar is one small part. But these things which begin and end and which have position, are all open to observation, the vague and careless observation of ordinary people, or the exact, patient, and continuous observation of those who are disposed and trained to give