the words themselves bear silent witness to the change that
had come over the scientific community. Man's place in
nature had to be seen differently now: Natural Theology
required to be re-thought.

It will be my object in these lectures to enquire about the
propriety of holding Christian views at all, in an age so
profoundly influenced by scientific discovery and scientific
thought. If, as I hope to show, this is possible with com-
plete mental integrity, then we may reasonably expect that,
out of the tensions which undoubtedly exist, we shall re-
ceive a wider interpretation both of nature and of nature's
God. Did not Darwin, in his Origin of Species, himself
assert that by the new views 'much light will be thrown on
the origin of man and his history'? A proper study of man's
place in nature must indeed throw light not only upon
nature and upon man, but--perhaps more profoundly--
upon God.

It may help if I begin by outlining the way in which our
thought will go. I propose first to consider the way in which
our mode of life and of our thinking about it has been
affected by science. This leads to a study of the tensions
which we sometimes loosely refer to as the conflict between
science and religion: and to a consideration of the ways in
which Christians have reacted to science. As we shall see,
many of these have done far more to undermine than to
support the Christian interpretation. Before we can build
up a satisfactory apologetic, we shall have to study the
nature of scientific truth. We shall have to ask what science
is trying to do, what presuppositions lie behind its practice
and what is its relationship to the world of facts. Consider-
able changes have occurred in the last fifty years to modi-
fy the answers that might have been given earlier to some

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