The conflict of Science and Religion has always arisen from one common ground of agreement, or fundamental postulate of both parties—­without which, indeed, it would plainly have been impossible that any conflict could have arisen, inasmuch as there would then have been no field for battle.  Every thesis must rest on some hypothesis; therefore, in cases where two or more rival theses rest on a common hypothesis, the disputes must needs collapse so soon as the common hypothesis is proved erroneous.  And proportionably, in whatever degree the previously common hypothesis is shown to be dubious, in that degree are the disputations shown to be possibly unreal.  Now, it is one of the main objects of this treatise to show that the common hypothesis on which all the disputes between Science and Religion have arisen, is highly dubious.  And not only so, but that quite apart from modern science all the difficulties on the side of intellect (or reason) which religious belief has ever encountered in the past, or can ever encounter in the future, whether in the individual or the race, arise, and arise exclusively, from the self-same ground of this highly dubious hypothesis.

The hypothesis, or fundamental postulate, in question is, If there be a personal God, He is not immediately concerned with natural causation.  It is assumed that qua ‘first cause,’ He can in no way be concerned with ‘second causes,’ further than by having started them in the first instance as a great machinery of ‘natural causation,’ working under ‘general laws.’  True the theory of Deism, which entertains more or less expressly this hypothesis of ‘Deus ex machina,’ has during the present century been more and more superseded by that of Theism, which entertains also in some indefinable measure the doctrine of ‘immanence’; as well as by that of Pantheism, which expressly holds this doctrine to the exclusion in toto of its rival.  But Theism has never yet entertained it sufficiently or up to the degree required by the pure logic of the case, while Pantheism has but rarely considered the rival doctrine of personality—­or the possible union of immanence with personality.[49]

Now it is the object of this book to go much further than any one has hitherto gone in proving the possibility of this union.  For I purpose to show that, provided only we lay aside all prejudice, sentiment, &c., and follow to its logical termination the guidance of pure reason, there are no other conclusions to be reached than these.  Namely, (A) That if there be a personal God, no reason can be assigned why He should not be immanent in nature, or why all causation should not be the immediate expression of His will. (B) That every available reason points to the inference that He probably is so. (C) That if He is so, and if His will is self-consistent, all natural causation must needs appear to us ‘mechanical.’  Therefore (D) that it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing, event, &c., to prove it due to natural causation.