[To THE EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."] think that few students
of soience will share your optimistic view that "the man of science and the sceptic work together with the Christian to strengthen those very foundations which the new knowledge fifty years ago threatened to undermine" (Spectator, March 25th). Dog- matic atheism, if it existed at all in the last century, was certainly as irrational as "the crudest tenets of the straitest sects " ; but this admission does not touch the great con- troversy of the present age. What the science of the last fifty years has done is to create an atmosphere in which belief in the supernatural dwindles and often dies. How long this belief will linger amongst educated men it would be rash to predict; but the writings and sermons of the leading clergy of the present generation are significant proefs of the rationalising of religious thought. We are, I think, much further from a rapprochement between theology and science than we were half-a-century ago, for our increasingly vivid perception of the stringency of natural law renders super- natural intervention more and more incredible.—I am,
Sir, &c., C. CALLAWAY, D.Sc. Cheltenham.
[We cannot agree. Surely the attitude of men of science like Sir Oliver Lodge gives a direct negative to our correspon- dent's assertion.—En. Spectator.]
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