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 • * • ' • Nature 
 
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 • ' • * • Revelation 
 
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 BL 240 ,P77 1889 
 Pritchard, Charles, 180b- 
 
 1893. 
 Occasional thoughts of an 
 
16 
 
If, 
 
OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS 
 
 OF AN ASTRONOMER ON 
 
 NATURE AND REVELATION 
 
OCCASIONAL THOUGHTS 
 
 OF 
 
 AN ASTRONOMER 
 
 ON 
 
 NATURE & REVELATION 
 
 By Rev. C. PRITCHARD, D.D., RRS. 
 
 SAVILIAN PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY, AND FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND FORMERLY 
 
 HULSEAN LECTURER, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 
 1889 
 
THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED TO THE REVERED MEMORY 
 
 OF TWO OF THE MOST UPRIGHT 
 
 AND ENLIGHTENED MEN OF THEIR GENERATION 
 
 THE LATE LORD CHANCELLOR HATHERLEY 
 
 AND 
 
 SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, Bart. 
 
 TO WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND COUNTENANCE THE UTILISATION 
 
 OF THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OF MY LIFE 
 
 HAS BEEN MAINLY DUE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following Discourses and Addresses were 
 written during the intervals of an absorbing pro- 
 fession. Nevertheless they are not to be regarded 
 merely as recreations sought for in a change of 
 work, but rather as indications of the spontaneous 
 undertones of a thoughtful life. 
 
 The audiences to which they were originally 
 addressed were, generally speaking, circumscribed, 
 such as meetings of the British Association and 
 of Church Congresses, but to some troubled minds 
 among them they are said to have been helpful. 
 For the most part they touch upon subjects which 
 appertain to all time, and they possess an interest 
 for all men. It is under the above circumstances 
 that these Discourses and Addresses, heretofore 
 scattered, have been collected, and are now pre- 
 sented to a wider class of readers. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 The Continuity of the Schemes of Nature 
 AND Revelation. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Discourse delivered before the British Association at 
 
 Nottingham in 1866 ...... i 
 
 II 
 
 The Analogy of Intellectual Progress to 
 Religious Growth. 
 
 A second Discourse delivered before the British Association 
 at Dundee in 1867. (The death and character of 
 Faraday) 53 
 
 III 
 
 The Testimony of Science to the Continuity 
 OF the Divine Forethought for Man. 
 
 A third Discourse deHvered before the British Association at 
 
 Exeter . . . . . . . . • 81 
 
^ CONTENTS 
 
 IV 
 
 Modern Science and Natural Religion. 
 
 An Address read at the Church Congress at Brighton in 1S74 Ti'9 
 
 Aspects of Nature in relation to Miracles 
 
 AND Providence. 
 
 An Address read at the Church Congress at Swansea in 1879 143 
 
 VI 
 
 Scepticism and Faith 
 
 considered in their relations to the progress 
 
 OF the Knowledge of Nature. 
 
 An Address read at the Church Congress at Dublin . . 161 
 
 VII 
 
 The Slowness of the Creative Progress. 
 
 A Discourse forming the first of a Course of Hulsean Lectures, 
 
 delivered before the University of Cambridge in 1866 . ' 175 
 
 VIII 
 
 Difficulties of Belief. 
 
 An Address delivered to followers of Mr. Bradlaugh in 
 Northampton . . . , 
 
 199 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Miracle in Joshua at the Battle of 
 
 Beth-Horon 227 
 
 X 
 
 The Star of the Magi 243 
 
 XI 
 
 The Creation Proem of Genesis . . . 257 
 
I 
 
 THE CONTINUITY OF 
 
 THE SCHEMES OF NATURE AND 
 
 OF REVELATION 
 
 A discourse delivered, by request, on the occasion of the Meeting 
 of the British Association at Nottingham. With remarks on 
 some relations of modern knowledge to theology. 
 
Xpr] fxiv TOL ye rbv dira^ irapab^ajxevov rod KTcaauTOS rbv Koafxov 
 ehaL rai^ras rds ypacpas Treireiadai., on oaa irepl ttjs Kriaeoos airavTo. 
 ToTs ^TjTovai rbv irepl avrrjs \6you, raura /cat irept ruv ypacpQv. — 
 Origen, Philocal. 
 
 Sfi. ' k.v(xyKalov o5v ecrrt irepiii.evei.v eo}S du tls fJ-ddrj ws del Trpos 
 6eovs Kal irpbs dv6pu}7rovs diaKeladai. 
 
 AA. riore odv rrapecTTai 6 xpoj-os oi'Tos, c5 liiOKpaTes ; /cat rts 6 
 waLdevaoJv ; . . . 2fi. Ouros ianv w /wAet Trept (toO. — 
 Plato, Alcid. //.... Ph/edo, § 6o, 6i . . . Re- 
 public, § 427. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This Discourse was written at Nottingham, im- 
 mediately after the delivery of Mr. (now Sir 
 William) Grove's address to the British Association. 
 Those who had the privilege of then hearing, or 
 who have subsequently read, Mr. Grove's discourse, 
 will at once perceive that his remarks on the 
 System of Nature suggested mine on the Scheme 
 of Divine Revelation. That eminent philosopher 
 pointed out, with a graceful comprehensiveness 
 peculiarly his own, how a Law of CONTINUITY 
 pervades and embraces the whole physical universe, 
 so far at least as our knowledge of it at present 
 extends. There are no gaps, no sudden leaps in 
 Nature, he observed, probably not even in the 
 interstellar spaces themselves. Modern discovery 
 seems to indicate with more or less distinctiveness 
 that the sun and the larger planets are in their 
 turns succeeded by smaller asteroids, and these 
 again by swarms of revolving meteoric or planet- 
 
4 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 ary dust ; the position of many of these swarms 
 being at least partially determined, and the times 
 and places when they become entangled and in- 
 flamed in our atmosphere being accurately known. 
 Saturn, again, has his systems of rings of meteoric 
 matter, and it may be that the sun is surrounded 
 by that mysterious substance from whence pro- 
 ceeds the zodiacal light. All these systems of 
 matter, moreover, are either identical in composi- 
 tion, or at all events contain many terrestrial 
 elements in common. Naturalists also tell us 
 that the same sort of unbroken gradation or 
 Continuity exists in the organic world ; species 
 melting into species, they say, so that the further 
 our knowledge extends, the more difficult it is to 
 decide where one ends and another begins. 
 
 The evidence that such is probably the con- 
 stitution of the things we see, was perhaps never 
 more clearly and succinctly detailed than in the 
 discourse to which I refer. While listening to this 
 account of the constitution of Nature, Origen's 
 remark, quoted by Bishop Butler, could scarcely 
 fail to occur to the mind of any person at all 
 versed in theology, and it certainly occurred to 
 mine. Butler, indeed, for the purposes of his 
 treatise, somewhat narrows the scope of what that 
 most philosophical of ancient divines intends to 
 imply, for the version which he gives is this : 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 5 
 
 " He ivho believes the Scripticres to have proceeded 
 from the author of Nature, may well expect to find 
 the same sort of difficulties in them as are found in 
 the constitution of Nature.'^ ^ Origen's remark, 
 however, does not appear to be restricted to the 
 question of difficulties alone, but to include any 
 and all generic relations of created things which 
 may be discovered by human research. Had he 
 spoken in the language of our day he would prob- 
 ably have said, " There is a Continuity between 
 the Scheme of Nature and the Scheme of Revela- 
 tion, as recorded in the Scriptures." 
 
 In this point of view, and so far as the very 
 restricted limits assigned to me would permit, I 
 have endeavoured to show how the great scheme 
 of redemption may be regarded as a grand con- 
 tinuation, or rather as the divine climax, of that 
 system of intervention and vicarious suffering 
 which not only pervades the natural world, but 
 without which merciful alleviation, that world would 
 become a scene of hopeless misery. Butler, 
 as is well known, has already shown the same 
 thing, under the idea of Analogy, which I here 
 present under the thought of gradation or con- 
 tinuity. I then proceed to show how faith in the 
 Redeemer is a grand continuation also, or rather 
 is the divine climax of that principle of trustful- 
 
 ^ Analogy^ Introduction. See the original facing the Preface. 
 
6 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 ness in each other, which forms the very cement 
 of the social fabric. Lastly, I have given my 
 reasons for representing the restoration or sanctifi- 
 cation of man's moral character by communion 
 with God, as in the main' a sacred extension of 
 that Imitative Principle acting through associa- 
 tion, which it has pleased God to implant in our 
 nature for many wise and moral purposes, and 
 which in this case He adorns with His especial 
 grace. 
 
 I do not pretend that there is anything 
 essentially new in these thoughts ; if there were, 
 this very novelty would have been, to me at least, 
 a sufficient reason for a very guarded reconsidera- 
 tion. But then the groiLping, I believe, is new, 
 just as the grouping of certain acknowledged 
 principles in the scheme of nature, under the 
 term Continuity, is new on the part of Mr. Grove. 
 I think also, that this mode of viewing the scheme 
 of Revelation, as contained in the Holy Scriptures, 
 is not without considerable importance. For 
 surely it must be a matter of great interest to 
 the Christian student, to see how each fresh 
 accession of human knowledge which God has 
 permitted (and as I think has intended) His 
 creatures to make, regarding the natural world, 
 not seldom serves also to illustrate and confirm 
 our faith in that scheme of divine government or 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 7 
 
 dispensation which is revealed to us in the Bible. 
 It was mainly this consideration which induced 
 me to select this new topic of Continuity, as the 
 proper subject for an address from the pulpit 
 to the members of the British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science ; and I have to express 
 my gratitude for the patient and respectful hearing 
 which they gave to my remarks. 
 
 It may not here be out of place to observe, 
 that the word Continuity is not the only philo- 
 sophical term for which we are indebted to Mr. 
 Grove. This term he has applied to \kiQ plan of 
 nature throughout its known extent ; but he has 
 also proposed another word, which groups together 
 \\\Q forces of nature in a singularly happy and ex- 
 pressive manner. These forces co-exist, interlace, 
 osculate with each other ; they are capable of evolu- 
 tion in a definite manner, the one from the other. 
 The associations of matter with motion, light, heat, 
 electricity, magnetism, and chemical action, are all 
 (in the language of Mr. Grove) CORRELATED, and 
 within prescribed limits, are interchangeable in 
 quality and in quantity. This CORRELATION of the 
 physical forces may, I think, be regarded as, upon 
 the whole, the most remarkable discovery since the 
 discussion of the Laws of Gravitation by Newton ; 
 and there are not wanting reasons to expect 
 that even the attraction of gravitation itself may 
 
8 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 be found to be a link in the same physical chain. 
 Now, since it is thus shown that the Divine 
 Governor of the universe has seen fit to bind, in 
 one bond of Correlation, the forces acting in that 
 part of His dominions which are seen ; ought we 
 not, in the spirit of Origen's remark, to look for a 
 similar Correlation between those principles or 
 laws, which have their proper functions in that 
 part of the Divine Government, which, though not 
 seen, is revealed ? If we seek for it, we shall 
 find it 
 
 For where do the laws of Providence, for 
 instance, end, and where do the laws of Grace 
 begin ? are not both of them phases of the same 
 Divine loving care ? Does not the one pre- 
 suppose the other ? And a similar remark holds 
 good regarding the functions of Faith, and Hope, 
 and Love, and Obedience. Is not Hope the twin- 
 sister of Faith ? And is not Obedience the 
 daughter of Love ? ^ And what becomes of 
 Obedience when Faith is under a cloud ? And 
 in the great scheme of Man's redemption, does 
 not an Apostle tell us that Justification and 
 Sanctification co- exist and interlace? and may 
 not this fact go far to explain the interminable 
 and sometimes unloving discussions regarding 
 their true origin and their distinctive functions ? 
 
 1 See Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 9 
 
 Hence the sagacious remark made by Origen 
 some fifteen centuries ago, like the expressions of 
 other comprehensive truths, proves to be prophetic, 
 and reaches to us and embraces our children. 
 And this leads me to observe how unnecessary and 
 how suicidal is that timidity, not to use a stronger 
 term, with which many religious persons, and, I 
 regret to add, some divines among us, receive the 
 successive disclosures of the constitution of natural 
 things, which of late years have come upon us 
 in thick abundance. Such timidity is unnecessary, 
 because each new fact, each new truth, when fairly 
 presented to the mind, if only it be a truth, cannot 
 fail to become a new illustration of Him whom 
 they know to be The Truth, and whom they 
 profess to love. For my own part, and I hope I 
 say it with no affectation, and I am sure I say it 
 with no reserve, from the results of modern re- 
 search, I have gathered additional reasons for rest- 
 ing in the simplicity of the ancient Christian faith, 
 and in modern discoveries I have found many a 
 new and unexpected trace of the Creator's majesty, 
 of His power. His wisdom, and His love. Some 
 instances of what I mean will, it is hoped, be 
 found in the Sermon which follows these remarks. 
 May I be permitted to say, that if the progress of 
 knowledge shall, on a calm and impartial review, 
 induce Theologians somewhat to modify, here and 
 
10 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 there, a popular, or hasty, or merely human inter- 
 pretation of one or two portions of the Divine 
 Revelation, then, judging from my own experience, 
 I feel assured that, with this increase of intelligent 
 perception of the Will of God, there must be 
 associated the exaltation of our reverential love 
 of His Word. 
 
 But it seems to me to be worth considering 
 whether this suspicious timidity regarding science 
 and scientific men, may not after all be grounded 
 on an entire mistake. For after all, is it true that 
 the pursuit of science has any inherent tendency 
 towards religious scepticism ? I would venture to 
 ask whether Kepler, or Newton, or Leibnitz, or 
 Euler, or Linnaeus, or Cuvier, were sceptics ? If 
 it were not that obvious reasons forbid it, I could 
 put, without misgiving, the same question in 
 reference to the great majority in the long phalanx 
 of living men, who are devoting God's noble gift 
 of genius to the elucidation of God's works. I do 
 not say that the fashionable Agnosticism of the day 
 has not found some adherents among men of 
 science, as it has found many among educated 
 men of every class. But it is pre-occupation of 
 mind, rather than science, which is, and ever has 
 been, the prolific parent of scepticism and of 
 indifference in religion. Are not the pre-occupa- 
 tions of high position, the pre-occupations of 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION ii 
 
 ambition, of literature, of money-getting and of 
 money-spending, of conceit, of sensual habits, and 
 even of idleness, at least as unfriendly to the 
 hearty acceptance of the Christian revelation, as 
 are the pre-occupations of scientific pursuits ? 
 I trust I am not guilty of speaking in a pre- 
 sumptuous spirit, if I venture to remark that 
 enormous mischief has arisen from ill-judged, un- 
 merited, and often very ignorant attacks which 
 have been made upon the supposed tendencies of 
 science, and the supposed scepticism of scientific 
 men, from the pulpit, in religious circles, and in 
 religious publications. It is agreeable to no man 
 to be pointed at with the finger of suspicion ; and 
 men of sensitive and independent minds will 
 leave, and within my own knowledge have left, a 
 ministration of God's word, not from any original 
 distaste for revealed truth, but because they have 
 found themselves, and the at least innocent pur- 
 suits they love, made the object of covert, and 
 unkind, and ignorant comment. It can be no 
 exaggeration to say, that such an alienation of 
 any highly gifted and influential mind is nothing 
 short of a public loss, and that, therefore, the 
 timidity in question is suicidal. 
 
 On the other hand, it cannot be doubted, and 
 it may not be concealed, that there is a reticence, 
 and I wish I were wrong in adding there is a 
 
12 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 growing reticence, observable in the writings 
 of some able men, which is both disappointing 
 and painful to religious minds. It is a reticence 
 regarding that Eternal Father, Who, even on 
 principles of natural religion alone, is the Prime 
 Cause, and the Governor of that universe, the 
 frame- work of which is the object of the researches 
 of these thoughtful men. It may be that one 
 cause of this reticence is, the natural reaction from 
 certain violations of good taste and propriety, 
 which at one time abounded in the (after all, well- 
 meant) writings of second-hand writers and 
 religious sciolists. It may be that another cause is 
 to be found in the fact that these great writers have 
 in their own minds intentionally distinguished 
 the subjective from the objective, separating the 
 things of sight from the things of faith ; but what- 
 ever the causes may be, the fact remains, and as I 
 have said, it is both disappointing and painful. 
 I will only venture to add one observation more 
 upon this subject, and I am sure that the great 
 writers to whom with unfeigned respect I allude, 
 will bear me out in the justness of the remark — 
 and it is this ; the giants of old, who were the 
 pioneers of modern knowledge, the Keplers for 
 instance, the Newtons, the Bernoullis, the Eulers 
 of ancient fame, had no such reticence. Why 
 should the sons be more reticent than the fathers ? 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 13 
 
 In this behest I cannot do better than conclude 
 with a few passages out of that magnificent 
 Scholium with which Newton closes the Frmcipia, 
 and if I give the original it is because I despair 
 of making or of finding a version which could 
 reproduce the eloquence of Newton's words : — 
 " Elegantissima hcecce solis planetarimi et cometariim 
 covipages, non nisi consilio et doinhiio entis intelli- 
 gentis et potentis oriri potttit. Et si stellcs fixce 
 sint centra similitim systematum, hcec omnia siniili 
 consilio construct a sitbernnt Unius dominio . . . 
 Hie omnia regit non nt anima innndi, scd ut 
 Universoruin Dominies. Et propter dominium 
 snnm, Dominns Dens HavroKparayp dici solet. 
 Nam Dens est vox relativa, et ad servos refertnr ; 
 et deitas est dominatio Dei, non in corpus proprium, 
 uti sentiunt quibus Deus est anima mimdi, sed in 
 servos. Deus summits est ens ceternum, infijiitum, 
 absolute perfectum . . . Non est cBternitas et in- 
 finitas, sed cetcrnus et infinitus ; non est duratio 
 et spatiimt, sed durat et adest . . . Ut ccbcils non 
 habet ideam colorum, sic nos ideam non kabemus 
 modorum, quibus Deus sapientissimus sentit et 
 intelligit omnia . . . Corpore omni et figurd cor- 
 pored prorsus destituitur, ideoque videri non potest, 
 nee audiriy nee tangi, nee sub specie rei aliciijus 
 corporecB coli debet . . . Nunc cognoscimus solum- 
 viodo per proprietates ejus et attributa, et per sapien- 
 
14 CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES OF 
 
 tissimas et optimas rentin structiiras et causas 
 finales, et adviiramur ob perfectiones ; veneramur 
 aiitem et colimics ob dominium. Colinms enim tct 
 servi, et Dens sine dominio, providentid, et causis 
 finalibus nihil aliud est qiiam fatnm et natura. A 
 ccBca necessitate metaphysicd, qnce eadem est et 
 semper et icbique, nulla oritur rerum variatio. 
 Tata rerum conditarum pro locis ac temporibits 
 diversitaSy ab ideis et vohuitate entis necessario exis- 
 tentis solummodo oriri potuit . . . Et hcec de Deo, 
 de quo utique ex phoenomenis diss er ere ad philo- 
 sopJiiam naturalem pertinet!' 
 
 In the notes, I have given what appear to me 
 valid reasons, drawn from astronomical and 
 physical considerations, why I cannot accept, to 
 its full extent, Mr. Darwin's Theory of Natural 
 Selection, as explaining the development of the 
 human Eye from some greatly inferior organisa- 
 tion.^ If the arguments are correct they extend 
 to other organs also. In the strictures on this 
 theory, I trust not a word will be found inconsistent 
 with that respectful admiration which I, in common 
 with most educated men, entertain for the author 
 of some of the most charming books in our lan- 
 guage. I hope, also. Dr. Tyndall^ will find no just 
 cause for complaint in the manner of my taking 
 exception to some of his recent remarks on Prayer. 
 
 1 Appendix, Note A. - Appendix, Note B. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 15 
 
 The great mental agitation on subjects con- 
 nected with Religion, for which this age is remark- 
 able, so far from furnishing a reasonable cause for 
 despondency, may fairly be viewed as a providen- 
 tial opportunity for learned and high-placed divines 
 to exhibit and enforce such new aspects of truth 
 as they may consider to have been overlooked. 
 It was in this light that Augustine habitually 
 regarded the controversies of his day. It is Ana- 
 thema, and not moderation in argument, that is a 
 sure sign either of a falling or a weakly supported 
 cause. In contending with an opponent, nothing 
 is gained by that assumption of a tone of superiority 
 or by that "look of offence, which though harmless 
 in effect, nevertheless," in the words of the greatest 
 of ancient historians,^ " is troublesome and painful 
 to those who endure it." 
 
 ^ Thucyd., lib. ii. cap. 37. 
 
THE CONTINUITY OF THE SCHEMES 
 OF NATURE AND OF REVELATION 
 
 " I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever : nothing 
 can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it : and God doeth 
 it that men should fear before Him. That which hath been 
 is now ; and that which is to be hath already been."— Eccles. 
 iii. 14, 15- 
 
 These words would be sufficiently striking even 
 if they were the language of an ordinary man. 
 Coming from a man pre-eminent for wisdom, and 
 opportunity, and experience, from one whose 
 mind, moreover, was illuminated by the inspira- 
 tion of God, our text assumes an aspect of more 
 than common importance. 
 
 It is possible, indeed, that to some persons our 
 text may suggest unwelcome thoughts of the 
 fixity of human individual destiny: you may 
 imagine for a moment that Solomon therein 
 desc^'ribes man as entangled in the meshes of an 
 iron necessity from which he cannot escape ; man, 
 not so much the sport, as the victim of his circum- 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 17 
 
 stances ; man, as playing in his little day his 
 predestined part, just as other men in their 
 generations before him played their own ; for is it 
 not said by the Royal Preacher, " I know that 
 what God doeth He doeth it for ever ; that which 
 hath been is now, and that which is to be hath 
 already been?" But I hope to speak to you to- 
 night of an interpretation of these remarkable 
 words truer, and deeper, and more hopeful. True, 
 I shall have to speak of permanent, inevitable 
 laws imposed by the Omnipotent Creator upon 
 the very constitution of His creature's being, and 
 on all the various circumstances which surround 
 him or affect him : but then these laws are 
 devised in consummate wisdom, and are executed 
 in unswerving love ; these laws of our moral, our 
 spiritual being, are to us the expressions of a holy 
 Father's will, they are the explanations of the 
 scheme of His righteous government ; they are to 
 us, and within the limits of our mental powers, 
 the unfolding of the plan on which the creation of 
 mind, and spirit, and matter, was devised and is 
 still sustained. 
 
 So far from forging the links of an iron necessity 
 for the thraldom of man, the permanence and 
 invariability of these laws secure the charter of 
 man's liberty of action, they constitute him a 
 responsible creature, they lie at the foundation of 
 
 C 
 
1 8 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF 
 
 his dearest hopes. It is alone because these laws 
 of nature and of being are permanent, that man 
 is enabled to foresee the consequence of his doings ; 
 it is on the security of this ground that he acts 
 with foresight and with confidence, forming and 
 persevering in his plans in the fulness of hope. 
 Nay, your town is at this time thronged with a 
 concourse of thoughtful and sagacious men, not 
 solely for the interchange of kindly greetings, but 
 to aid and encourage each other in the search for 
 truths which they know are ordained of God, for 
 purposes beyond those of to-day or of to-morrow, 
 and concerning which they know that, " Whatso- 
 ever God doeth. He doeth it for ever ; nothing 
 can be put to it or taken from it : and God doeth 
 it that men should fear Him." 
 
 What I want to show you, or to bring to your 
 remembrance to-night, is this : — I want to con- 
 vince you, if you need the conviction, that those 
 great cardinal facts, or doctrines as we call them, 
 of the Christian faith, which are made known to 
 us by revelation from God, are analogous to, or I 
 might even say are in continuity with, those other 
 ordinary facts or principles, by the application of 
 which it is ordained of God that you and I live 
 our hourly life, and that human society coheres 
 day by day. I do not, indeed, mean to say that, 
 by any stretch of thought, the unaided mind of 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 19 
 
 man could have devised or could have conceived 
 so mighty a scheme as that of the redemption of 
 the great human family (for instance) through the 
 agency of a crucified Redeemer. I do not mean 
 to say that man, of himself and out of himself 
 alone, could have originated the thought of salva- 
 tion from the consequences and the power of 
 sin, by faith in that Redeemer. But I do mean 
 to say, that so soon as these cardinal facts of the 
 Christian faith have been taught us, on examina- 
 tion we find they are all of a piece, and all in 
 consistency with those other wise and beneficent 
 arrangements, which we discern in the world 
 around us and within us. Herein, I say, are 
 veirfied the words of our text, " That which hath 
 been is now; and that which is to be hath already 
 been." 
 
 I propose then, under this point of view, to 
 consider, 
 
 I. The Redemption of mankind by a suffering 
 Redeemer. 
 
 II. The Salvation of man from sin, and from 
 its consequences, by faith in that Redeemer. 
 
 III. The Sanctification of man's character, i.e. 
 the development of his moral being into righteous- 
 ness, by the operation of the Divine Spirit, and 
 through prayer. 
 
 And my aim, as I have said, will be to show 
 
20 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 you that these cardinal facts or chief doctrines of 
 revelation are majestic instances of that same sort 
 of CONTINUITY of the Divine plan in the moral 
 and spiritual world, which we have so lately and 
 so ably been taught to observe in the universe of 
 matter. All these several arrangements, I say, 
 are but consistent and CONTINUOUS parts of one 
 Divine magnificent plan, ordained of old by the 
 Eternal Father ; " nothing can be put to it, nor 
 anything taken from it. That which hath been is 
 now ; and that which is to be hath been already." 
 
 And first, as touching Redemption by a 
 suffering Redeemer. 
 
 Society, the whole fabric of the moral world, 
 is carried on and is held together by a law, by a 
 scheme of natural intervention or mediation ; I 
 think you could scarcely name a joy you have 
 ever felt, or a trouble from which you have ever 
 escaped, which you cannot trace to the interven- 
 tion of another, and not rarely to an intervention 
 effected with pain to the intervener. 
 
 Think of the little babe ; — there it lies, joyous 
 and redolent with the promise of the activities of 
 life, yet utterly helpless and dependent upon 
 others' care. But think also of the pale face of 
 her whose strength scarce suffices to nestle her 
 little one in her nerveless arms. Nay, without my 
 bidding, some of you perforce recall to memory, 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 21 
 
 how the mother's pulse ceased to beat before she 
 could utter a parent's blessing on her child. 
 And what is all this ? what is it but the re- 
 demption of a life, at the cost of the sufferings of 
 another ? 
 
 Pass onwards a few years, and trace that child 
 now walking with elastic step at his father's side 
 — but look upwards at the father's face ; you will 
 not be surprised to find many a deep furrow there, 
 furrows that bear testimony to the father's anxieties 
 and the father's toils — anxieties and toils, that the 
 bright boy who walks at his side may have a good 
 offset for the battle of life before him, — nay, 
 anxieties and toils sometimes deep and inevitable 
 for the bare supply of that child's daily bread. 
 And what means all this ? What is it but re- 
 demption again, sometimes procured at the cost 
 of labour, and suffering, and tears ? 
 
 And when is it that you cease to hear men 
 speak of their " friends " ? What other word so 
 common among us ? Need I remind you what 
 that word " friend " implies ? Alas ! for the most 
 part it implies, not the confiding interchange of 
 thought, not the sweet comparison of experience, 
 and hope, and aspiration, not the pleasant sugges- 
 tions which arise from community of taste ; for 
 such high privileges are reserved for those only 
 who by patient continuance in well-doing have 
 
22 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF 
 
 acquired a capacity to enjoy them ; but that 
 commonest of words, a " friend," bears testimony 
 to that commonness of weakness which looks 
 for aid in another's strength ; to that commonness 
 of wants which seek their supply in another's abun- 
 dance ; it bears testimony to that commonness of 
 troubles which not rarely can be removed solely 
 at the cost of another's pains, even greater than 
 those which they assuage. There is not, there 
 cannot be, a man before me, who may not trace, 
 again and again, instances of what I mean in his 
 own personal history. "I speak of what we 
 know and feel within." 
 
 And think again, for a moment, even of the 
 arts and conveniences of life ; of the appliances, 
 the inventions, the discoveries which God hath 
 ordained to ennoble life : such results come at no 
 man's light bidding ; the discovery, the invention 
 may come, and in fact must come at last, like a 
 flash, but the happy, the .final thought comes to 
 the man of genius only after days, and nights, or 
 even years of patient endurance in intellectual 
 toil. And when it does come to him, not seldom 
 the health is failing, or the lamp of life is flicker- 
 ing and burnt low ; or other men step in, reaping 
 the harvest of his toil, and leaving him little more 
 than the gleanings of the field, the sowing whereof 
 was all his own. Look at the countenances of 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 23 
 
 the chiefs among those able men who now throng 
 your town, and on their brows you will find many 
 a trace of the midnight struggle with thought, 
 ageing them before they have reached their prime : 
 " one soweth and another reapeth." These men 
 labour — you and I " enter into their labours." 
 
 And so I might proceed with other instances 
 of a like import ; if the time allowed, I might 
 more than briefly allude to the well-known names 
 of noble men and of noble women still living 
 among us, who, like apostles and martyrs of old, 
 count not their lives dear unto them, if only they 
 may help the helpless, cheer the cheerless, raise 
 the fallen, and impart the joy of hope to the 
 spirit of the dying. But I forbear ; for one con- 
 tinuous system of redemption and of vicarious 
 suffering has been ordained of God as the very 
 law and the plan of our natural being. 
 
 Now, such being the scheme, such the manner 
 after which it has pleased the Eternal Creator to 
 impart the joys, to assuage the sorrows, and to 
 enlighten the ignorance, of His creatures in this 
 their natural life, which endures but for threescore 
 years and ten, I ask you. Is there anything 
 which can reasonably jar upon our feelings if we 
 find that the Eternal Father, in His marvellous 
 beneficence, has interposed after a like, though a 
 higher manner, on behalf of His children in those 
 
24 CONTINUITY OF THE lA WS OF 
 
 higher relations of theirs which endure for ever ? 
 For without some interposition, without some 
 communication from on high, what can man learn 
 by his natural faculties of the life to come ? 
 Without this interposition, what can he ascertain 
 by his natural faculties of the world of spirit? 
 Does God really care for man with an individual, 
 with a personal care ? Will God hear his prayer ? 
 Did he intend him to pray ? Can there be any 
 sympathy between a pure Almighty God and a sin- 
 ful man, conscious of his wilful sin ? Is it possible 
 for such a man to be at one with such a God ? 
 
 To these anxious questions, the wisest men of 
 ancient times admitted that of themselves they 
 could give no reply. Yet, strange to say, Socrates, 
 confessedly the wisest of them all, more than once, 
 and as it were with the voice of prophecy, ex- 
 pressed his strong conviction, that the God who, 
 he said, manifestly ''cared'' for man, would one 
 day send him a teaeJier to instruct him. What 
 wonder, then, if in the fulness of time God should 
 take compassion on the lost, and ignorant, and 
 pitiable condition of His children, and, through 
 the mediation of Christ and His matchless ex- 
 ample, teach the world what a good man should 
 be, and what a good man may be ? What 
 wonder, moreover, if God, through the mediation 
 of His Divine Son, should thus give to man a 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 25 
 
 distinct and living inanifestatioji of all that a 
 finite being need know, or can know, of the infinite 
 Godhead ? And further still, what wonder if this 
 interposition, this mediation thus made by the Son 
 of God on man's behalf, should be accompanied 
 by the suffering and the death of the Redeemer ? 
 Would it not be all of a piece, would it not be in 
 harmony, in CONTINUITY with those other number- 
 less natural interventions in man's behalf, which 
 by God's natural appointment we see involve the 
 sufferings of the intervener ? 
 
 But more still remains. Man is not only con- 
 fessedly pitiable and ignorant, but he is, and he 
 knows he is, both sinful and a wilful sinner 
 against God. What shall — what can put away 
 such sin ? What can make an atonement, a re- 
 conciliation between this sinning creature and this 
 all -pure but offended God? How can the two 
 be brought together? The Revelation of God's 
 will to us in the Gospel of His Son tells us that 
 all this is accomplished through the Cross of the 
 Redeemer Christ. If you ask me why, or how 
 such things can be, I cannot tell you ; at least, 
 by no means fully so. But then, in the natural 
 world, I cannot tell you what, in their subtle 
 essence, are those mysterious agencies called light, 
 or heat, or electricity, or magnetism, or gravita- 
 tion. Of some of their relations, and of some 
 
26 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF 
 
 portion of the laws under which they are ordained 
 to act, men of genius, after the patience and the 
 failures of ages, have at length caught a glimpse, 
 and of these they have taken ample advantage in 
 the appliances of life. But what these agencies 
 are in themselves, who can tell ? Neither in the 
 natural world do I know why " like produces 
 like," nor do I know why the worlds, and the 
 creatures which our world contains, are constrained 
 to abide the slow process of their growth, and 
 start not at once into the fulness of their being, 
 like Minerva in her panoply. And if again I 
 turn to the moral world, I cannot tell you why 
 a righteous Creator permitted sin to defile the 
 beautiful world which He created. I cannot tell 
 you why a loving and wise Father permitted 
 sorrow, and ignorance, and wrong, to be the lot 
 of all His children ; but as I see that in the 
 natural world He has provided the mediation and 
 suffering of one man to remove the suffering or 
 the ignorance of another, why should I cavil at 
 a revelation which tells me that man may be 
 pardoned and reconciled to God, through the 
 humiliation, the life, the example, the death, the 
 vicarious sufferings of His incarnate Son ? These 
 things angels may well desire to look into. 
 " They are higher than heaven, what can I do ? 
 They are deeper than hell, what can I know ? " 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 27 
 
 So I will bow my head, and I will place myself at 
 the foot of the Saviour's Cross. I will wonder and 
 adore, and I will stay my mind on God. All that I 
 know is, that the law of Divine Redemption is in 
 harmony, in CONTINUITY with God's other dispensa- 
 tions, and I see that herein " whatsoever God doeth, 
 it shall be for ever. I know that what hath been 
 is now, and that which is to be hath already been." 
 II. We now come to another law of the moral 
 world, to the great Christian scheme of salvation 
 by FAITH in Christ Jesus. Many are the attributes 
 which in the Gospel are assigned to Faith. By 
 faith the Christian is said to stand ; by faith he 
 walks ; by faith he is made pure ; by faith 
 he removes mountains ; by faith he overcomes all 
 things ; by faith he lives, he is justified, and he is 
 saved. But if these attributes assigned to Faith 
 are great, so also are the cavils with which men 
 in all ages have been disposed to admit her claims, 
 and many and grievous are the charges which 
 they have laid at her door. For is it practically 
 found, men have asked — and they have the right 
 to ask it — is it in accordance with experience, that 
 men lead holy lives in proportion to the strength 
 of their religious convictions, and to the purity and 
 perfection of the creeds which they profess ? The 
 devils have their convictions, yet the devils tremble 
 and are impure. What, then, is the true source of 
 
28 CONTINUITY OF THE I A WS OF 
 
 these apparent contradictions ? It lies mainly, I 
 think, in a mistake as to the meaning of the term 
 FAITH itself. Let us try then to ascertain what 
 this much-vaunted, much-misunderstood principle 
 really is. And here I observe, that if there is any 
 one English word which will explain it, it is tritst- 
 f Illness, the trustfulness of love.-^ Indeed, in the 
 English translation of the Old Testament, the 
 equivalent to the same word in the New is in- 
 variably rendered by the word " trust " ; and if I 
 were to recount to you all the achievements attri- 
 buted in the Old Testament to trust in Jehovah, I 
 should have to repeat to you a large portion of 
 the Old Testament itself; and you would soon 
 perceive how the results of this tncst in Israel's 
 God, as there revealed, are very much the same 
 as those assigned to faith in God as now more 
 fully made known to us in the Gospel of Christ 
 Jesus. So far, then, we may even here observe a 
 CONTINUITY in the principles of God's dispensa- 
 tions to His creatures, as exhibited to the men of 
 old time, and to us Christians in these latter days. 
 But I wish to go further, and I wish to show you 
 how this same principle of faith, or trustfulness, is 
 the very keystone of the arch of our social fabric, 
 the very strength of our daily natural lives. Now, 
 as in the illustration of the principle of vicarious 
 
 1 So Luther says again and again, Fides est fidiicia. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 29 
 
 suffering, which runs through the world of nature, 
 we took the mother's pitiable condition at the 
 birth of her child, so here, to exemplify the con- 
 tinuity of faith, we shall take the instance of the 
 young child itself For the first years of its 
 existence its whole life is of necessity a life of 
 dependence and trust In faith it seeks its 
 natural food ; in faith it nestles itself in its 
 mother's breast ; in faith it strives to stand ; 
 in faith it lisps the fond names of father and of 
 mother ; and, blessed be God, in this Christian 
 land in faith it sits upon its mother's lap, and with 
 stammering lips learns to call upon the name of 
 Jesus. As years advance the young child walks 
 at his father's side, and, gazing in his father's face 
 with unquestioning faith, learns from him and 
 applies the first lessons of the life before him. 
 Thus the young child, by the natural ordinance of 
 God, is, as it were, reared and nurtured in a cradle 
 of faith, and if not too indocile he soon becomes a 
 fitting emblem (and the illustration here is not 
 mine, you will see) — he becomes an emblem of 
 those children of an elder growth, who, in their 
 maturity, shall by faith live the life of the true 
 citizens of the kingdom of God. 
 
 But these early lessons in faith stop not here. 
 In faith and patience he painfully learns the arts 
 of maturer life. In faith he ploughs ; in faith he 
 
30 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 SOWS ; in faith he gathers into barns ; in faith he 
 launches into the deep ; in faith he borrows ; in 
 faith he lends ; in faith he carries on his commerce 
 with his brother man, often and of necessity con- 
 fiding to his trust the very means to which he 
 looks for his daily bread. Need you any further 
 illustration of what faith is, and what faith 
 achieves ? Think for a moment of that wonderful 
 thread which now, by God's good pleasure, unites 
 and associates two distant continents. It was 
 FAITH that laid that wire, overcoming the ele- 
 ments, scaling the mountains, and spanning the 
 unknown caverns which form the dark floor of the 
 ocean. It was faith, I say, which for days and 
 nights together, without one moment's intermission, 
 kept the strong, untiring arm, and the fixed, 
 watchful eye, upon the marvellous appliances, until 
 they reached the haven where they would be, and 
 had learnt that the mother of many nations had 
 in the flash of a moment sent the greeting of love 
 to her child in the far-off west. Meanwhile, 
 strange to say, upon the shores of the East, there 
 were other and less harmonious sounds to be heard 
 than those of the triumph of the victory of faith. 
 These were the sounds of wailing : Germany 
 weeping for her children because they were not ; 
 and among ourselves, thousands of hearts failing 
 them for fear of the wreck of their substance. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 31 
 
 And wherefore were these sounds of mourning, and 
 whence came this fear ? You may trace them to 
 the absence of Faith. Nations and men had lost 
 their faith in each other, and the offspring of Dis- 
 trust are War and Panic. Hand in hand, and close 
 by the side of Faith, stands her sister HARMONY; 
 when Faith departs, Chaos takes her place. 
 
 Thus you see that the faith in Jesus, the trust, 
 I mean, in a sympathising, personal Saviour, 
 whereby the Christian stands ; the faith in Jesus 
 whereby the sinner is purified, justified, and saved, 
 is, after all, no new principle, but rather the old 
 and abiding principle of trustfulness, which alone 
 gives cohesion to our natural life. It is the old 
 principle indeed, — but the old principle greatly 
 heightened, intensified, sanctified by the Spirit of 
 God. It is the golden chain which unites the 
 visible world of flesh with the unseen world of 
 spirit, assuring the child of nature that he is also 
 the child of God. Here then, again, and once 
 more, we observe the CONTINUITY of the natural 
 dispensations of God's providence with the spiritual 
 dispensation of God's grace ; and herein it is that 
 we know that " what God doeth. He doeth it for 
 ever," — " that which hath been is now ; and that 
 which is to be hath already been." 
 
 HI. And now, had the time permitted, as I 
 had hoped it would, I should have tried to show 
 
32 CONTINUITY OF THE lA WS OF 
 
 you how even the great doctrine of the sanctifica- 
 tlon of man's character by the Spirit of God, 
 effected for the most part through the medium of 
 prayer, is again all of a piece, and in continuity 
 with other eternal principles which God has 
 impressed upon our natural being ; but the subject 
 is too large a one for me at this late hour to draw 
 upon your patience. Nevertheless, some few 
 thoughts must be briefly expressed to you on the 
 
 subject of PRAYER. 
 
 I need scarcely remind you that it is in prayer 
 that the true, the advanced Christian lives. It is 
 his soul's daily, hourly food. But, after all, what 
 is this prayer? Is there anything which at all 
 resembles it and its effects in the world of flesh 
 wherein we move? Prayer, in its deep reality 
 and in its highest form, is the reverential inter- 
 course of the Christian's spirit with the spiritual 
 world : it is reverential communion with God, — 
 communion with God (that is) as manifested to 
 our apprehension in the person of Christ Jesus. 
 Now let me ask you, what takes place in the 
 ways of a man's life, who lives much in the com- 
 munion and society of his friends ? Does he not 
 by this intercourse catch their modes of thought ? 
 Does he not contract their habits, and imitate 
 their manner of life ? And all this result arises 
 from a great principle of imitation — a principle of 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 2>Z 
 
 imitation, which God for the wisest purpose has 
 implanted so fixedly in the nature of man. Just 
 so, — only in a higher, and holier, and more 
 reverential degree, — even so with the Christian in 
 his true prayers and in communion with God. 
 Just in proportion to the reality and frequency of 
 this holy, spiritual intercourse, will be the gradual 
 approximation of his own character to that of the 
 ineffably perfect and Holy Being who, through 
 the great name of Jesus, permits and encourages 
 His creatures to approach Him. Hence it is that 
 we read such words as " growth in grace," and of 
 the Christian being " built up into the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ." Need you 
 an example of what I mean? Think for a 
 moment of the Apostle John : in him, beyond all 
 other men, shine conspicuously the qualities of 
 sincerity and dignity and love ; and were not 
 these especially the characteristics of the one, 
 perfect, matchless. Divine Man, who made the 
 Apostle His companion, ever walking at his 
 Master's side and leaning on His bosom as He 
 sat at meat, and in the walk and at the meal 
 catching the undertones of his Master's voice.? 
 And so it is, in his own measure and degree, with 
 every Christian who really communes with God ; 
 his character becomes gradually moulded into 
 the character of Christ ; and thus more nearly 
 
 D 
 
34 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF 
 
 resembling Christ, he gradually becomes more 
 amiable and social, more truthful, more self-con- 
 strained, more forgiving, more peaceful. I say 
 especially, more peaceful. For, mark you, what is 
 the Law of Prayer in the kingdom of God ? It 
 is " men ought always to pray and not to faint ; " 
 it is " in everything by prayer and supplication, 
 with thanksgiving, let your requests be made 
 known unto God : " nor must we forget, that He 
 who is our example and " all our hope," added to 
 His own prayer, " nevertheless, not my will, but 
 THINE be done." And then, mark you, with 
 especial care, what is the Law of the Promise 
 attached to prayer. It is not that the bitter cup 
 shall, in all cases, be put away ; it is not that the 
 thorn in the flesh shall, in all cases, be removed ; 
 it is not that the precise petitions shall be as 
 precisely granted ; but, better far than this, the 
 Law of the Promise is, that God, if need be, will 
 give fortitude to drink the cup, strength to bear 
 the cross, grace sufficient to endure the thorn. 
 Beyond all, the Law of the Promise is, that the 
 Christian shall rise from his knees peaceful ; he 
 shall become peaceful, like the God of Peace with 
 whose Spirit he has held communion, and at 
 whose footstool he has prayed. " Let your 
 requests be made known unto God, and the PEACE 
 OF God, — the peace of God which passeth all 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 35 
 
 understanding, shall garrison your hearts and 
 minds." " Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace 
 whose mind is stayed on God." 
 
 In the strength of this peace of God, Stephen, 
 before the face of those who stoned him, fell 
 asleep in Jesus, praying, " Lord, lay not this sin 
 to their charge." 
 
 In this peace, Paul and Silas, thrust into the 
 prison with their feet made fast in the stocks, at 
 midnight sang praises unto God. 
 
 In this peace, Polycarp bade the executioner 
 leave him unbound at the stake, for that same 
 God, in communion with whom he had lived, 
 would nerve him, that he flinched not when he 
 died. 
 
 In this peace, Boniface, the martyr and apostle 
 to the Germans, before setting out on his last 
 missionary journey, bravely but calmly thus gave 
 his final instructions : " My son, place in the 
 chest with my books a linen cloth, in which, 
 should occasion arise, they may wrap my worn- 
 out corpse." 
 
 In this peace, Luther stood before his enemies, 
 and the enemies of truth, at the Diet of Worms, 
 and, taking the Bible in his hands, exclaimed, 
 " By this I stand ! " 
 
 In this peace, Rowland Taylor, of Hadley, 
 walked to the stake with head erect and hopeful 
 
36 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE 
 
 eye, as a man would return to the home that he 
 
 loved. 
 
 In this peace, Ridley looked forward with joy 
 to the flames, and bade his sister come to his 
 marriage. 
 
 In this peace, thousands upon thousands of 
 God's children, far from the gaze and the 
 applause of the crowd, have kept the even tenor 
 of a Christian life, in prosperity without elation, 
 in penury without discontent, in bereavements 
 without questionings, in suffering without repining, 
 in revilings without reviling again. 
 
 These all lived in prayer and communion with 
 God, and, like God, they became peaceful ; and 
 after this law, so it may be with you and me, for 
 " / know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for 
 ever : nothing can be put to it, nor any thijig taken 
 from it : and God doeth it that men shoidd fear 
 before Him. That ivhich hath been is now ; and 
 that whieh is to be hath already been.'' 
 
APPENDIX 
 Note A 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION 
 
 I HAVE taken the liberty of expressing my admiration of 
 Sir W. Grove's philosophical acumen in grouping together 
 the plan and operations of nature under one felicitous 
 term. He is, I am sure, far too candid in his address 
 to the British Association, he has travelled over far too 
 wide a field, and he is too conscious of the difficulties 
 attending physical researches, not to be prepared for 
 objections to at least some of his remarks. 
 
 He appears to have accepted the Darwinian Hypo- 
 thesis as explaining the origin of that Continuity which 
 undoubtedly exists in the natural world. I, for one, am 
 unable to accept that Hypothesis, at all events in its 
 length and breadth, without some reserve. As an illus- 
 tration of the general nature of the objections which I 
 entertain, I will take an instance from that branch of 
 physics with which it is my lot to be most familiar ; the 
 Optical Structure of the Human Eye. From the cornea 
 to the retina, the eye is an Optical Instrument. But 
 
38 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 what an Instrument ! The computation of the curves 
 and distances of the refracting surfaces in this instrument, 
 and the assigning of the proper law of density for the 
 several layers in its principal lens, would require the 
 application of a mathematical analysis, such as I hesitate 
 not to say was never yet possessed by a human geometer. 
 The mechanism required for instantaneously changing 
 the forms and distances, and in one instance the magni- 
 tude, of its component parts, would require a handicraft 
 such as never yet was possessed by a human mechanic. 
 I say nothing of the chemistry required for the composi- 
 tion of the several constituent media. I presume Mr. 
 Darwin would admit that this description is not exag- 
 gerated. Now let us attend to the process of " natural 
 selection," by which this marvellous organ is said to have 
 come into being. "I can see," says Mr. Darwin,^ "no 
 very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many 
 other structures), in believing that natural selection has 
 converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve, merely 
 coated with pigment and invested by transparent mem- 
 branes, into an optical instrument as perfect as is pos- 
 sessed by any member of the great Articulate Class," i.e. 
 as perfect as the human eye. And next comes the 
 mode after which this simple apparatus of the coated 
 nerve, by insensible additions gradually but accidentally 
 made, is said to be converted at length into the eye of 
 man. " We ought in imagination to take a thick layer 
 of transparent tissue with a nerve sensitive to light 
 beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be 
 continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate 
 into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed 
 
 ^ Origin of Species, istedit. , pp. i88, 189. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 39 
 
 at different distances from each other, and with the 
 surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, 
 we must suppose that there is a power always intently 
 watching each slightly accidental alteration in the trans- 
 parent layers, and carefully selecting each alteration 
 w^hich, under varied circumstances, may, in any way, or 
 in any degree, tend to produce a distincter image. We 
 must suppose each new state of the instrument to be 
 multiplied by the million, and each to be preserved till 
 a better be produced, and then the old ones to be 
 destroyed. Let this process go on for millions on 
 millions of years. ..." Now we must here ask, What 
 is this "power always intently watching each slightly 
 accidental alteration?" A few hnes further down in 
 Mr. Darwin's page we read : " Natural selection 
 will pick out with unerring skill each improvement." 
 But what is this " Natural Selection ? " We must here 
 take Mr. Darwin's ow^n definition : " This preservation 
 of favourable variations, and the rejection of injurious 
 variations, I call Natural Selection." ^ 
 
 Now to me there appear three objections, which 
 indispose me to accept the above description of the pro- 
 cesses by which the human eye could have been formed, 
 and I w411 state them as succinctly as I can. First, 
 consistently with such knowledge of optical combinations 
 as I happen to possess, I cannot understand how, by 
 any series of accidental variations, so complicated a 
 structure as an eye could possibly have been successively 
 improved. The chances of any accidental variation in 
 such an instrument being an improvenioit are small 
 indeed. Suppose, for instance, one of the surfaces of 
 
 1 Origin of Species, p. 8r. 
 
40 CONTINUITY OF THE LA IVS OF 
 
 the crystalline lens of the eye of a creature, possessing 
 a crystalline and cornea, to be accidentally altered, then 
 I say, that unless the form of the other surface is 
 simultaneously altered, in one only way out of millions 
 of possible ways, the eye would not be optically improved. 
 An alteration also in the two surfaces of the crystalline 
 lens, whether accidental or otherwise, would involve a 
 definite alteration in the form of the cornea, or in the 
 distance of its surface from the centre of the crystalline 
 lens, in order that the eye may be optically better. All 
 these alterations must be simultaneous and definite in 
 amount, and these definite amounts must co-exist in 
 obedience to an extremely complicated law. To my 
 apprehension, then, that so complex an instrument as an 
 eye should undergo a succession of millions of improve- 
 inejits^ by means of a succession of millions of accidental 
 alterations, is not less improbable than if all the letters 
 in the Origin of Species were placed in a box, and on 
 being shaken and poured out millions on millions of 
 times, they should at last come out together in the order 
 in which they occur in that fascinating and, in general, 
 highly philosophical work. 
 
 But my objections do not stop here. The improve- 
 ment of an organ must be an improvement relative to 
 the new circumstances by which the organ is surrounded. 
 Suppose, then, that an eye is altered for the better in 
 relation to one set of circumstances under which it is 
 placed. By and by there arise a second set of circum- 
 stances, a second environment, as it is termed, and the 
 eye is again, by Natural Selection, altered and improved 
 relatively to the second set of circumstances. What is 
 there to make the second set of circumstances such that 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 41 
 
 the second improvement (relative to them) shall be an 
 improvement or progress /;/ the direction of the ultimate 
 goal of the human eye ? Why should not the second 
 improvement be a retrogression away from the ultimate 
 organ now possessed by man, and necessary to his well- 
 being? But all this suiting of the succession of circum- 
 stances is to go on, not once or twice, but millions on 
 millions of times. If this be so, then not only must 
 there be a bias in the order of the succession of the 
 circumstances, or, at all events, in the vast outnumbering 
 of the unfavourable circumstances by the favourable ; 
 but so strong a bias, as to remove the whole process 
 from the accidental to the intentional The bias ^ implies 
 the existence of a Law, a Mind, a Will. The process 
 becomes one not of Natural Selection, but of Selection 
 arranged by an hitelligent Will 
 
 In considering the state of things just described, we 
 must also take into the account, that the successive 
 variations of the eye are said to be accidental What, 
 then, but a co?istantly exerted Intelligent Will could cause 
 the occurrence of new circumstances so as to meet these 
 accidental variations, and concur ultimately to produce 
 a certain definite result, that is to say, an instrument 
 possessing the necessary and truly wonderful contriv- 
 ances of the Human Eye ? But is such a process to be 
 called Providence, or Miracle, or the Inversion of 
 Providence ? 
 
 Further still. Mr. Darwin considers that the process 
 of natural selection must have gone on for millions on 
 millions of years, in order to have produced the results 
 
 ^ On this subject of bias, see a highly philosophical review of 
 " Quetelet on Probabilities," in Sir John Herschel's Essays. 
 
42 CONTINUITY OF THE LA IVS OF 
 
 which surround us. It is difficult to assign any approxi- 
 mate hmitation to the meaning of the term milhons on 
 milHons of years. But in turning to page 287 of the 
 Origin of Species, I find the author considers that the 
 denudation of the Weald must have required some three 
 hundred millions of years ! This denudation is but a 
 trivial process, indeed, compared with the mighty geo- 
 logical evolutions which have occurred between that 
 denudation and the present time, and inconceivably 
 trivial compared with other evolutions which preceded 
 it. Mr. Darwin says, page 489, "As all the living forms 
 of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived 
 long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that 
 the ordinary succession by generation has never once 
 been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole 
 world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a 
 secure future of equally inappreciable length" 
 
 If then we assign a period of one million of millions of 
 years to have elapsed, during which natural selection has 
 worked for the productionof a human eye, we may presume 
 we are within the limits contemplated by Mr. Darwin. 
 
 Now, I do not hesitate to say that this assumption is en- 
 tirely out of harmony with the existing state of knowledge. 
 
 For during the deposition of the Silurian strata, there 
 must have been a deep ocean, and terrestrial things were 
 then proceeding, Mr. Darwin says, on pretty much the 
 same quiet model as at present. But it has been rendered 
 extremely probable by the researches of Adams, Hansen, 
 Delaunay, Airy,^ and some others, that owing to the com- 
 bined action of the ocean and the moon, the length of the 
 day has been, and is now, undergoing a constant increase. 
 ^ Add to these names, Professor G. Darwin, 1S89. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 43 
 
 On reading Mr. Darwin's enchanting volume, we 
 seem to be, as it were, in the hands of a great magician, 
 who leads us up and down Elysian fields, pointing out 
 to us on this side and on that new aspects of things 
 which, though true, were beyond the reach of our ex- 
 pectations ; nevertheless, when, as we hope, we are near- 
 ing the hill -top and getting a sight of the primordial 
 genesis of organised beings, the chariot on which he has 
 mounted us rolls down the hill like the stone of Sisyphus. 
 
 ' ' With hands and feet struggHng, he shoved the stone 
 Up a hill-top ; but the steep wellnigh 
 Vanquished, by some great force repulsed, the mass 
 Rushed again obstinate down to the plain. 
 
 Tall trees, fruit laden, with inflected heads 
 Stooped to us ; pears, pomegranates, apples bright, 
 The luscious figs, and unctuous olive smooth, 
 Which, when with sudden grasp we would have seized, 
 Winds whirled them high into the dusky clouds." 
 
 Odyssey, Book xi. 
 
 Note B 
 on prayer 
 
 " In it did he live, 
 And by it did he live ; it was his life. 
 His mind was a thanksgiving to the power 
 That made him ; it was blessedness and love ! " 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Some months (1866) have now elapsed since Professor 
 Tyndal, in the public journals, put a question regarding 
 prayer, which at the time excited much attention and 
 some animadversion. In reference to the propriety of 
 
44 CONTINUITY OF THE LA IVS OF 
 
 prayer to God for the removal of epidemic and other 
 diseases, Dr. Tyndal asked whether " Prayer had proved 
 itself a match for vaccination ? " Various answers were 
 given to this question, and to the other questions which 
 this one essentially involves ; I will now, after my manner, 
 endeavour to give my own reply. 
 
 In one of those exquisite Dialogues which have come 
 down to us from the wisest of the ancients for an ever- 
 lasting possession, whether actually written by Plato 
 himself or by a heathen follower matters not, Socrates 
 is represented as meeting a great statesman in the streets 
 of Athens, on his way to the temple of some god to pray. 
 The nature of his errand was manifest from the chaplet 
 which he carried in his hand, while the gravity with 
 which he kept his eyes fixed upon the ground, indicated 
 that the object of the vow he was about to offer was, in 
 the statesman's thought, one of more than ordinary im- 
 portance. Whether it was that Socrates well knew the 
 restless ambition of Alcibiades (for that was the states- 
 man's name), and therefore suspected that his friend and 
 disciple, having some unscrupulous project on foot, was 
 now on his way to conciliate the good-will of the god for 
 its accomplishment, or whether the mere sight of the 
 sacrificial chaplet alone suggested the thought, we are 
 told that the sage immediately stopped the statesman, 
 and, as his wont ever was, began to ply him with a 
 string of questions, the drift of the questions now being 
 directed to the proper objects and the propriety of 
 prayer. " Do you think," said he, " that the gods some- 
 times grant and sometimes refuse our prayers ? Do you 
 see that there are very many foolish men, — some of 
 them foolish even to madness, — and that such men 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 45 
 
 necessarily offer to the gods very foolish prayers ? Do 
 you think there is no danger, that while you ask for 
 what you believe will be for your good, you may inad- 
 vertently be seeking for what, if granted, would be your 
 ruin ? " And then he goes on to ask him what sort of 
 knowledge a man should properly possess before it was 
 safe for him to pray to the gods. Should it not be the 
 knowledge of what is the best ? And are they many, or 
 are they few, who possess this knowledge ? And if they 
 have not this knowledge, how do they know what they 
 ought to pray for ? Hereupon Alcibiades confesses him- 
 self perplexed, and says, " he inclines to leave the choice 
 of blessings to the gods." Socrates then digresses to 
 questions regarding that state of the suppliant's mind 
 which is most agreeable to the god ; and after recounting 
 an anecdote or two, of how a certain costly and magnifi- 
 cent national ritual had been disregarded by the gods, 
 while they had lent a propitious ear to a very simple 
 prayer, he quotes a few lines from Homer, to the effect 
 that " the gods care not for our gifts, but they do regard 
 the state of our souls." 
 
 The sage then proceeds to tell the statesman that 
 there was indeed one prayer which seemed to him both 
 wise and safe ; he had learned it, he says, from an old 
 poet, who had recommended it to his friends who were 
 praying unwisely, and it was to the following effect : — 
 " Sovereign Jove, what is good for tis, grant, though ive ask 
 it not ; but from what is dangerous, though we ask for it, 
 O King, deliver us!''^ Even to us in this nineteenth 
 
 ^ ZeO (iaaiXev rd /xev icrdXa Kal evxofj-epois kul dvevKTOLS 
 'AfJ-fil dtdov, ra 5e decva, Kal evxofx^voLs aTroXe^ov. 
 
 Plato, A/ci3. ii. p. 143. 
 
46 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 century, these are burning words, reminding us of words 
 familiar and more burning still, and one might have sup- 
 posed they would have satisfied Alcibiades. He does 
 indeed go so far as to admit that the prayer was both 
 wise and safe, but Alcibiades was an Athenian, and " the 
 Greeks seek after wisdom." To them, all ignorance 
 was, as it still is to some modern philosophers, a positive 
 evil ; and this prayer, safe as it was, seemed little better 
 than an appeal to, or it might be even the offspring of, 
 ignorance. Thereupon ensues a series of questions as 
 to human ignorance, but these I omit as not being 
 essential to our present argument ; and I now come to 
 a thought which to some of my readers will appear not 
 alone unexpected, but even startling, as proceeding from 
 a heathen philosopher more than two thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 " Alcibiades, you are perplexed and even disappointed^ 
 but you must wait," said Socrates; "you must wait till 
 there comes some one who shall be instructed how to 
 remove this ignorance." "And when will this time 
 come ? " asks the statesman \ " and who shall be my 
 teacher ? " " It is even one who cares for you ^^^ ^ replies 
 the sage ; " as Homer says that Minerva removed the 
 mist from the eyes of Diomede, 
 
 ' ' ' That he might well discern if the shape were a god or a mortal ; ' 
 
 so must this teacher remove the mist which now 
 envelops your mind, that you may discern what is 
 good and what is evil, which at present, methinks, you 
 have no power to see." "Well, then," said Alcibiades, 
 " if only he makes me better, let him remove the mist, 
 
 1 See Motto facin": the Preface. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 47 
 
 or whatever else it may be, and whosoever this man 
 maybe." "And he will do it," rejoins Socrates, "for 
 it is marvellous how great is the regard he bears you." 
 "It seems, then," concludes Alcibiades, "that till this 
 teacher comes, I had better defer my prayer." 
 
 Such, then, was the knowledge, such were the hopes, 
 and such was the indecision of the best-informed among 
 the ancients, on the subject of prayer. So deep, so 
 irrepressible, so unsatisfied, appears to have been the 
 longing of the great thinkers of the heathen world for 
 the advent of some teacher who should throw a light 
 upon the relations in which men stand to the world 
 unseen, that the thought of it, we are told, recurred to 
 the martyr sage when there remained but an hour or 
 two before the fatal cup was to set the seal to the 
 sincerity of his life. But it was not now, as before, the 
 need and the hope of a teacher who should inform him 
 how to demean himself before the god at the time of 
 his prayer, or even what it was safe for him to pray for, 
 but it was now rather the utterance of the longing for 
 a teacher who should deliver his friends, — not himself, 
 observe, but his friends, — from the fear of death. It 
 even might be that Socrates suspected the two teachers 
 would be one and the same. " It is not ourselves," said 
 his friend Cebes in the prison, " that are frightened, it is 
 rather a child within us that is terrified ; but, alas ! now 
 that you are about to leave us, where shall we find one 
 who is master of a spell sufficient to remove this fear ? " ^ 
 "Greece is a Avide place," replies the calm, heroic old 
 man, "and there are many foreign nations also, and in 
 search of this teacher we must explore many regions, 
 1 Plato, PJiccdo, §§ 60, 61. 
 
48 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 and spare neither trouble nor money in the search ; and 
 you must search also amongst yourselves for this gift, 
 for, perhaps, you will not easily find any one who pos- 
 sesses this power more than you do." And these are 
 among the last words of the wisest of men, spoken while 
 they who had the appointed office were even now pre- 
 paring the hemlock that was to consign him to his doom. 
 It is here that, with a sort of passionate impatience, 
 our thoughts glance across the breadth of but a narrow 
 sea, from Athens and from the utterance of these dim 
 hopes, to where the last of a long line of Hebrew pro- 
 phets at that very time was speaking, as his bretliren for 
 a thousand years had spoken before him, of the advent of 
 such a teacher, yet more than a teacher, and that with no 
 stammering Hps, but as if he were nigh at the very door. 
 "You must search for him, you must spend your labour 
 and your money in the search," said the dying sage, and 
 he said it possibly from something beyond the natural con- 
 victions of his pohshed intellect.^ " Behold ! He shall 
 come, the messenger whom ye seek shall come ! the Sun 
 of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings ! " 
 These were the last words of the last of the expiring race 
 of the Hebrew Seers ; and he spoke from the inspired 
 emotions of his heart. For four hundred years there 
 was no more such Sage, nor for four hundred years was 
 the voice heard of any such Prophet. 
 
 To Doctor Tyndall's question, and what it involves, 
 
 the words quoted above give nearly all the answer which 
 
 Natural Religion can supply. It may, however, be 
 
 added that the scheme of Continuity observable in 
 
 . nature cannot but force upon our minds the contem- 
 
 1 Was his Adt^wi' an influence from the Divine illuminating \\'ord ? 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 49 
 
 plation of the existence of created intelligences superior 
 to ourselves, and active with a diviner energy, in some 
 other parts of the universe, or even close to our paths 
 or nigh to our beds, and so onwards and onwards, until 
 we reach the One Infinitely Intelligent and Beneficent 
 Mind, the Lord and Creator of them all. And here, 
 again, the scheme of Correlation steps in, and inas- 
 much as it has been shown to apply as closely to the 
 laws of our moral nature as to the laws of our physical 
 being, it affords to us something more than the dawn of 
 a hope that inasmuch as there is implanted within our 
 universal nature a principle or affection for religion, and 
 a yearning for intercourse with some spiritual essences 
 beyond ourselves, so there must be, in correlation to 
 this affection and this yearning, some proper object for 
 that affection to adore, and some spirits to reciprocate 
 the sympathies of that yearning. 
 
 Now " in this darkness or this light of nature, call it 
 which you please," the Christian points to that Teacher 
 for the advent of whom the ancient sages longed. To 
 that Divine Teacher's Word the Christian must listen, 
 and that example which He set, the Christian must strive 
 to follow. It is needless to say this Divine Alan was 
 pre-eminently a man of prayer ; and if you ask how and 
 for what He prayed, and what He declared was the Law 
 of Prayer in the new kingdom which He said He came 
 to establish, it will all be found in the records of His life, 
 and some small portion of it has been indicated in the 
 Address which precedes this note. The remark, how- 
 ever, may here be added, for it bears especially on the 
 question before us : there once came an hour when the 
 approach of physical suffering appalled even that Man 
 
 E 
 
50 CONTINUITY OF THE LA WS OF 
 
 of Strength, and His prayer then was, that God His 
 Father, if possible, would remove the cup, but if not, 
 "Thy \vill be done." I could say more than this, if 
 in reverence and propriety I dared, for I could refer to 
 those strong, sad, mysterious cryings upon the Cross 
 when the Teacher whom the sages unconsciously longed 
 for, the Saviour of the World, was bruised for our 
 iniquities, and was bearing the chastisement of our sins : 
 but the theme is too sacred, and our natural emotions 
 are neither to be tempted nor trusted here. 
 
 When, then, Dr. Tyndall asks whether it is right to 
 pray for the aversion of cholera, or of smallpox, or of 
 physical suffering of any sort, or whether vaccination 
 proved a match for prayer, I have given the answer, 
 partly here, and partly in the Address. 
 
 But how know we that the Teacher has come, and 
 that His religion comes from God ? For the learned we 
 appeal to the testimony of history ; for the learned and 
 unlearned alike there is this better evidence — Try it.^ 
 
 If it be still further urged that the scheme of nature 
 is carried on by fixed unalterable laws, and that the 
 storm whose cradle is in the Atlantic must spend its 
 fury on the very spot where the laws of heat and of 
 vapour bid it ; if it be said that the path of the cholera, 
 the cattle plague, the smallpox, is as surely prepared 
 beforehand and as inevitably as is the path of the electric 
 flash — be it so ; — but whence know we that intervention 
 is impossible ? I see at this moment a bud on one of 
 the trees which skirt the boundary of my neighbour's 
 land. I know that when that bud has become a branch 
 next year it is certain from the laws of nature on what 
 ^ This is the practical argument somewhere proposed by Coleridge. 
 
NATURE AND REVELATION 51 
 
 precise spots, and at what precise moments, the several 
 leaves of that branch will fall. But not so ; my neigh- 
 bour next year may erect his haystack close by that tree, 
 and then all is changed. But is not the whole life of 
 man spent in contriving interventions of those conse- 
 quences which would follow if the laws of nature took 
 their own course independent of his will ? By the force 
 of the genius which the Creator has given him, does he 
 not harness the winds and guide the lightning, and make 
 fire, and air, and earth, and water, do the bidding of his 
 intelligent desires? Does not the law of Continuity, 
 then, lead us to expect that the Will of the Creator must 
 be at least as free to intervene as is the will of the 
 creature ? 
 
 I will conclude this long note by referring to the 
 sentiments entertained on this subject by one of the 
 most acute and independent minds that ever existed. 
 It is said of the great philosopher Coleridge, that in one 
 of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he writes — 
 
 "... Of whose all-seeing eye 
 Aught to demand were impotence of mind ! " 
 
 But in his maturer years he told one of his friends 
 that he reverted to this sentiment with strong com- 
 punction. He considered that the act of praying was 
 the very highest energy of which the human heart was 
 capable, praying, that is, with the total concentration of 
 the faculties ; and the great mass of worldly men and of 
 learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of 
 prayer. Two years before his death he said, "Believe 
 me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the 
 reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will 
 
52 CONTINUITY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE 
 
 listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the 
 thing He pleaseth thereupon, — this is the last, the 
 greatest achievement of the Christian warfare upon earth. 
 Teach us to pray, O Lord." And then he burst into a 
 flood of tears. 
 
II 
 
 THE ANALOGY OF 
 
 INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS OF 
 
 RELIGIOUS GROWTH 
 
 A Discourse delivered oy Request in the Episcopal Church of St, 
 Paul, on the Occasion of the Meeting of the British Associa- 
 tion at Dundee. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In this second sermon, addressed principally to 
 members of the British Association, I have, as in 
 the former discourse at Nottingham, endeavoured 
 to avoid the discussion of controverted points, 
 whether in Physics or in Theology. The brief 
 hour allotted to the preacher is too sacred for 
 such topics ; and there are many simple, yet far- 
 reaching thoughts connected with our Holy 
 Religion and our common being, which come 
 home alike to the Philosopher and the Theo- 
 logian, to the learned and to the man who is 
 unversed in books. Hence in both the sermons 
 I have sought rather to illustrate the analogies of 
 Natural to Revealed Knowledge, than to reconcile 
 any presumed discrepancies between them ; and 
 these I am convinced are rather apparent than real. 
 With regard to the former, that is to say the 
 analogies, Origen ^ pointed out long ago that He 
 
 1 Quoted by Bishop Butler, but restricted l)y him to its applica- 
 tion to the analogy of difficulties. 
 
56 AJVALOGV OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 who is the Author of Nature, and He who has 
 revealed to man as much as it is essential for him 
 to know of the Spiritual Creation, being one and 
 the same, we may reasonably expect to find not 
 only a similarity of difficulty, but a similarity also 
 of arrangement in nature and in grace. If this 
 be true, the well-instructed Christian will welcome 
 every fresh accession to our knowledge of natural 
 things, because he will expect to find something 
 of its counterpart in the world of spirit, opened 
 to man in the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 With regard to the other point, namely, the 
 apparent discrepancies, another great father^ in 
 the Ancient Church, with a sagacity equal perhaps 
 to that of Origen, anticipated the need, now be- 
 ginning to be so closely felt, of a reconsideration, 
 from experience, of the proper interpretation to 
 be put upon some passages of Holy Writ, to 
 which hitherto we may have unavoidably attached, 
 from ignorance, a too narrow and restricted 
 meaning. It may be that similar successive en- 
 largements of our natural knowledge, associated 
 with similar enlarged conceptions of the meaning 
 of the Scriptures, will proceed together to the end 
 of the probation of mankind ; to that promised 
 time, in fact, when " the earth shall be full of the 
 knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." 
 
 ^ Augustine, Confess. , xii, etc. 
 
THE ANALOGY 
 
 OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 
 
 "I say unto you, Unto every one which hath shall be given." 
 Luke xix. 26. 
 
 Twelve months ago, on an occasion and before 
 an audience similar to this, I endeavoured to 
 show that the main principles divinely implanted 
 in man for the maintenance and discharge of his 
 social relations, are of a like kind with those 
 which in the Holy Scriptures are declared 
 necessary to save him from the consequences 
 and the power of sin, and restore him to the 
 favour and the image of God, 
 
 In the redemption of Mankind, for instance, 
 by a suffering Redeemer, I there traced the 
 highest and the noblest form, — the divine climax 
 in fact, — of that human, friendly help, which it is 
 necessary for one man to extend to his brother ; 
 
58 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 sometimes in order to place him in the station 
 that becomes him, and at other times to save him 
 from temporal ruin : and I observed, moreover, 
 that this friendly, necessary help is commonly 
 bestowed not without great difficulty and suffering 
 and loss to the interposer himself The very 
 constitution of society, in fact, is cemented and 
 maintained by one grand scheme of Natural 
 Mediation. 
 
 Faith, also, in a personal and ever-living 
 Saviour, I showed was no new or mysterious 
 principle unknown to the natural sympathies of 
 man, but rather is the old and abiding principle 
 of that trustfulness of one man in another, which 
 alone gives cohesion to our daily life. It is the 
 old principle indeed ; but then the old principle of 
 trustfulness in man is heightened and intensified 
 and sanctified by the Spirit of God, redirected 
 also and applied henceforth to Him who, though 
 now the Christian " sees Him not, yet in whom 
 believing he rejoices with joy unspeakable and 
 full of glory." 
 
 And, lastly, I endeavoured to show that the 
 sanctification, the improvement of the moral 
 character, the building up of the man within the 
 heart, in the main through the agency of medita- 
 tion and prayer, is a divine appointment, all of 
 a piece and in continuity with that other appoint- 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 59 
 
 ment, equally divine, whereby man, through an 
 innate principle of imitation, becomes assimilated 
 in his moral character to those who are the objects 
 of his habitual association and constant thought. 
 
 Thus the Laivs — and here lay the whole scope 
 and tenor of the discourse — thus the Laws after 
 which we see by experience God has fashioned 
 man's nature in relation to his social, temporal 
 life, are in harmony and continuity with those 
 other laws, by the operation of which Revelation 
 declares it is God's good pleasure to fit his now 
 sinful children for their sinless, eternal inheritance 
 in the society of the redeemed. 
 
 The scope of my remarks to-day will, in some 
 sense, be the supplement, and form the conclusion, 
 of that other discourse. For I shall endeavour 
 to show you, or to remind you, that the processes 
 which in the Bible are declared to accompany and 
 to promote the Christian's growth in grace and in 
 the knowledge of Christ ; the processes, that is, 
 which accompany the development of our moral 
 nature, are in strict analogy with those which 
 we find accompany growth in the knowledge of 
 the natural things around us. That is to say, I 
 shall endeavour to show how the education of the 
 religious principle as proposed and provided for 
 in the Bible, is all of a piece with what experience 
 teaches us regarding the education of the intcllec- 
 
6o ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 tual faculties. In other words, the processes by 
 which the Bible tells us a man can alone become 
 morally good, are pretty much the same as those 
 by which, when applied to another part of his 
 nature, he becomes intellectually great. Both 
 combined, render him in the language of the 
 noblest of our poets, 
 
 " Dear to God, and famous to all ages." 
 
 Now I cannot but think that the false and 
 fatal prejudice, which, like the poisoned robe of 
 Nessus, still clings to the minds of some good 
 men, viz., the suspicion that growth in human 
 knowledge is unfriendly to the Christian's growth 
 in grace and in the knowlege of Christ, — I say 
 this suspicion may be corrected or removed by 
 the consideration of such analogies as these. For 
 the existence of such analogies is sufficient to 
 show that the means by which natural knowledge 
 is to be acquired, have been as much the object 
 of the Divine Pre-arrangement, as have been the 
 means provided for our moral advancement. To 
 secure to man as much of the knowledge of the 
 divine nature and of the divine will, as his 
 capacities admit, it has pleased God to give a 
 Revelation contained in the pages of a Book. 
 To secure to man the knowledge of material 
 things, Chrysostom said long ago, with a prophetic 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 6i 
 
 sagacity, "God has given the Universe in tJie 
 place of a Book!' It is the duty of the Christian 
 to read and to reverence each. In a Hke 
 spirit, Pascal spoke as a true philosopher when 
 he said, " Nature after all is only another form of 
 Grace." It is the wisdom of the natural philo- 
 sopher neither to ignore nor neglect the analogy. 
 
 Thoughts of this kind at the present day can 
 scarcely be out of place before any congregation 
 of educated Christians, but they seem to me to 
 be unavoidably suggested by the circumstances 
 under which we meet. For in the assemblage of 
 educated men who now throng your city, you 
 will find those who represent the fairest and the 
 noblest forms of human genius. Some you will 
 find who, by penetrating intellect, have taught us 
 how all the glittering hosts of the starry canopy 
 are linked in a bond of material brotherhood with 
 one little globe which they encircle. These men 
 have constrained the sun himself to solve the 
 enigma of his mysterious fires by which from the 
 beginning he has been ordained of God to arrange 
 and uphold all terrestrial things. And at length 
 with patient importunity the same men have 
 compelled the moon to reveal the secrets of her 
 devious course. 
 
 Others of them have delved into the solid 
 earth, and there they have learned the wondrous 
 
62 ANALOGY OF IN TELL E C TUA L PRO GRESS 
 
 story how, age after age, and through myriads of 
 ages, that earth has been clothed by a loving 
 Creator in orderliness and beauty,^ the creatures 
 of His bountiful hands " taking their pastime 
 therein," and disporting themselves each after 
 the joy of his kind : and when successive genera- 
 tions of this lavish beauty and this joy of life 
 have passed away, when these all have done their 
 appointed office, and all is thereby prepared, then 
 there came forth the fiat of God : " Let us make 
 man in our own image," and "in the image of 
 God created He him." 
 
 Others of these gifted men consume the silent 
 hours, probing the depths of thought, and search- 
 ing how to number, or to measure, or to weigh, 
 or to compute the interactions of all things in- 
 organic, from an atom to a sun. 
 
 And lastly, others among them, by an intuition 
 incommunicable, seize upon the products and 
 evolutions of the thoughts of other men, and by 
 a strange alchemy, re-combine them in the arts 
 and practical appliances of life. It is these men 
 who have taught us how to baffle the winds, and 
 the waves, and the tides, and have associated the 
 remotest families of the earth by the winged 
 message of a moment. Surely these are thoughts, 
 
 1 See the Duke of Argyll's Reign of Law, p. 
 A delightful book, replete with Christian philosophy. 
 
 I 
 
70 RELIGIOUS GROWTH 63 
 
 my brethren, not unbecoming to the Christian 
 pulpit. For these men have been ordained of 
 God to be, in their day, the intellectual seers, and 
 prophets,^ and priests, and interpreters, of the 
 wonderful works of His hands. I say, moreover, 
 that it is by such achievements of thought, that 
 the aspirations and pursuits of thousands of other 
 men, less gifted than themselves, are raised above 
 the blinding dust and the poisonous mists which 
 beset the earth, and are carried away from the 
 whirl of the mill, from the clang of the hammer, 
 from the busy, anxious murmur of the Exchange, 
 to the contemplation of the handiwork and the 
 glory of Him, in whom we live and move and 
 have our being. 
 
 But then the Christian philosopher knows full 
 well, and the Christian minister must never forget 
 to impress it upon his flock, that man cannot live 
 in the light and by the force of the intellect alone. 
 Within the human heart there broods an ever- 
 busy array of appetites, passions, and affections ; - 
 and upon these the Bible declares, and experience 
 confirms the declaration, that there is impressed 
 by nature and inheritance, a wrong and a very 
 
 1 St. Paul expresses the same thought when he says, *' And 
 He Himself (Christ) gave some, Apostles : and some, Prophets, 
 . . . for the work of the ministry. " — Ephes. iv. ii. 
 
 2 See Bishop Butler's Sermons on Hzimaii Nature, ii. iii. 
 
64 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 sinful bias : Conscience, indeed, sits among these 
 appetites, passions, and affections, as a judge upon 
 his throne, and, bidden or unbidden, pronounces, 
 as with the voice of God, his ceaseless verdicts ; 
 but conscience has lost his power to enforce his 
 authority. The words of St. Paul here find an 
 echo from every man's heart : " The good that I 
 would, that I do not, and the evil that I would 
 not, that I do." Who of us has not felt it a 
 thousand times ? for I speak of what we know and 
 feel within. Who, then, or what shall rectify 
 this evil bias ? what shall sanctify the aims and 
 objects of these emotions of the soul ? Who or 
 what shall restore to conscience the kingly 
 authority which is his right ? It is not in man, 
 nor in man's philosophy ; that has been tried 
 beyond 2000 years, from Plato of ancient times 
 to Comte of this present day ; it has been weighed 
 in the balance and found wanting. The intellect 
 may be able, with great eloquence, to assert the 
 rigJit, but is utterly powerless to restore the might, 
 of conscience. 
 
 Now that which the powers of intellect and 
 philosophy have failed to do, the Gospel of Christ 
 Jesus undertakes to effect : it promises to sanctify 
 the heart of him, who in his heart accepts the 
 message ; it proposes to give power as well as 
 right to the conscience, and to set the man at 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 65 
 
 peace with God and with himself. Physical 
 knowledge has made many of the men among 
 us useful and great ; it is the power of God, as 
 revealed in the Gospel of His Son, which alone 
 can make all of us happy and good. 
 
 It is here that the analogy I spoke of comes 
 in ; the analogy, that is, between the processes 
 whereby a man becomes intellectually great, and 
 those processes whereby he becomes morally 
 good ; of course I use the terms good and great 
 in a sense that is relative, and consistently with 
 that lowliness and consciousness of imperfection 
 which become alike the philosopher and the 
 Christian. The life of each of them, moral or 
 intellectual, is a progress and a growth ; each 
 proceeds step by step, and every step is an 
 illustration of the text, "To him that hath shall 
 be given :" assuredly this is the law of the king- 
 dom of mind, and on two separate occasions it 
 was proclaimed by its Divine Founder as the law 
 also of the Kingdom of Grace. 
 
 For mark the commencement of the life of 
 each ; compare, that is, the first conscious intro- 
 duction of the man into the kingdom of grace with 
 the first introduction of the scholar into the fields 
 of the knowledge of the physical creation. In the 
 Holy Scriptures the man is said, in most expressive 
 language, to be " born again " ; the old man is said 
 
 F 
 
66 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 to be put off, the new man is put on ; he who enters 
 the kingdom must first become as a Httle child. 
 
 Think, then, of the young child when his con- 
 sciousness first fully dawns upon him : mark his 
 intense curiosity ; how he must needs taste, and 
 touch, and handle all things ; observe his ceaseless 
 activity, and the joyousness which sometimes 
 seems to overspread his very existence ;^ look at 
 his first ineffectual attempts to run or to walk ; 
 note the errors of judgment into which he falls as 
 to the dimensions and the distances of things ; 
 observe the wonder and the trustfulness with 
 which he listens to those whom he loves, and his 
 early docility towards those whom he trusts. 
 
 And now, having traced this picture in your 
 minds, let me ask you, have I been in reality 
 describing the feelings and early progress of the 
 Christian when he first realises the conviction that 
 he is a redeemed child of God ; or have I been 
 portraying the earlier days of a man's pupilage in 
 the knowledge of the works of the Divine Creator ? 
 If heart answers to heart, I am quite sure that 
 many a Christian man, and many a Christian 
 woman, who listens to these words, can recall to 
 memory a childhood in grace — a first conscious 
 entrance into a filial relationship to God the 
 Father, through the pardon and acceptance which 
 
 1 See Wordsworth's Ode to IinniOTtalitv. 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 67 
 
 come through Christ Jesus ; the very elements 
 of which consisted of a chilcUike activity, and 
 curiosity, and joyousness, and wonder, and trust- 
 fulness, and love ; and least of all were wanting, 
 the errors of incipient Christian judgment." ^ 
 
 The same language also applies equally well 
 to the true scholar on his first introduction to the 
 School of Science ; there is the same intense) 
 curiosity, and activity, and joyousness.^ 
 
 There is the same type of childhood's un- 
 bounded hope and inevitable error. 
 
 1 I am not here intentionally touching on the ground of theo- 
 logical controversy. Few men will associate the name of Paley 
 with enthusiasm or with exaggeration ; yet Paley, in speaking of 
 religious conversion, says : " It (conversion) is too momentous an 
 event ever to be forgot. A man might as easily forget his escape 
 from a shipwreck." — Sermon vii. 
 
 2 I can well remember to this hour, now after the lapse of 
 beyond fifty years, — and what student of Nature is there who has 
 not enjoyed a similar experience, each in his own line? — I can 
 well remember, I say, the sensations of delight felt when for the 
 first time I saw, through the new achromatic microscope of that 
 day, the dust of the- coal ashes under the fire-grate, revealing the 
 coniferous markings of the pine trees of the primeval forests, the 
 parents of that coal. And then there came Kirchoffs explanation 
 of the dark lines in the Solar Spectrum ; and Faraday's doctrine 
 of Electrical Induction ; and Joules's discoveiy of the conversion of 
 motion into heat ; and Darwin's marvellous revelations of the 
 relations of insects to the construction of floral organs, as given in 
 his monographs on the Primulacece and the Lythrums, and in his 
 Fertilisation of Orchids. And then came the disclosure of the material 
 fabrics of the stars and of the sun's atmosphere through the spectro- 
 scope ; and more recently still Mr. Roberts's wonderful photograph 
 of the Nebula in Andromeda, so full of the seeds of speculation. 
 
68 AJVALOGV OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 Truth, however, here leads me to notice for a 
 moment an apparent exception to this analogy. 
 For there are some highly-favoured Christians, the 
 language of whose spirits, by the force, it may be, 
 of holy example and early education, from their 
 childhood has been that of Samuel, " Speak, Lord, 
 for thy servant heareth." Like Timothy, some 
 Lois or Eunice instilled into their dawning minds 
 the knowledge and the love of God. In such 
 instances, perhaps as rare as they are certainly 
 blessed, there is no recollection of the first fervour 
 of a new affection, but there remain the quiet 
 habits of a pious life, which, though in truth the 
 work of the Divine Spirit, have seemed to them 
 to be a portion of their nature. But even here 
 the exception to the analogy is rather apparent 
 than real ; for there are like instances where from 
 favourable circumstances the young child has been 
 introduced to the knowledge of the natural world 
 about him almost with the dawn of his conscious- 
 ness ; and the growth of this love of natural 
 knowledge has thus become, to Jihnsclf at least, 
 unobserved and inevitable. 
 
 But then this fervour of the new affection in 
 due time subsides ; its purpose was to animate 
 the Christian with courage to combat with the 
 early difficulties which he soon has to encounter, 
 before experience has provided him with all the 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 69 
 
 weapons of his warfare, and has fully convinced 
 him that the victory must be his. If the feeling 
 continued in its first intensity, it would soon 
 become a weakness, rather than a strength, for 
 the Christian might then be lost in the pleasurable 
 contemplation of his own emotions. 
 
 The earliest discipline through which the 
 Christian is carried, in general, is the discipline of 
 Patience, for his progress in the new, the divine 
 life before him he soon finds is far slower than 
 he, in his first raptures, expected ; and many 
 are the temptations, the seductions which assail 
 him, and, in general, many also are the moral falls 
 from that pattern of perfect holiness which in the 
 Gospel is set for his imitation. It is not long, 
 also, before he feels the painful isolation from 
 many of his old friends, who cannot understand 
 what it is which so strangely absorbs him, and 
 who would fain persuade him that his new life is 
 unreasonable and profitless. It is now, indeed, 
 that his first and his chief trials have commenced ; 
 but if he obediently follow the Divine Hand which 
 both points the way and confers the strength, 
 then patience will have her perfect work ; and 
 patience worketh experience, and experience hope ; 
 and it is by hope, which is only another form of 
 faith ; it is by hope that the Christian is anchored 
 to the Rock. 
 
70 AA^ALOGV OF INTELLECTUAL PROGI^ESS 
 
 Now, I say that very few of the words which 
 thus rapidly describe the progress of the Christian 
 in this second stage of the development of his 
 moral being need be changed to describe the 
 progress of the true scholar, when he has made 
 his first advance in the school of natural know- 
 ledge. He finds the same need of the discipline of 
 patience, the same slowness of progress ; he falls 
 into similar errors, from whence he must painfully 
 and manfully emerge ; he not seldom excites the 
 same pity for his new infatuation, in those who 
 call themselves his friends. In him also patience 
 must have her perfect work, otherwise to him 
 there will come no experience, and his hope will 
 then make him ashamed. 
 
 So the life of the true student in the kingdom 
 of nature is thus far in analogy and correlation 
 with the life of the true disciple in the kingdom 
 of grace : each is a progress and a growth ; each 
 step therein is a necessary preparation for the 
 next; and in each is abundantly verified that 
 cardinal law, written alike on the pages of nature 
 and of grace, — "To him that hath shall be given." 
 
 You will observe that I have been speaking of 
 the true, the sincere disciples alone, whether in the 
 School of Grace or in the School of Nature. For 
 as there are many who, having received the seed 
 of the divine life, allow it to be choked' by the 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 71 
 
 cares of this world and the deccitfulness of riches ; 
 or, being led away by the lust of the eye, or the 
 lust of the flesh, or the pride of life, bring no fruit 
 to perfection ; so there are many who linger 
 merely on the threshold of the School of Know- 
 ledge ; pleased or amused, now and then, with 
 the sound of the glories that are discussed within 
 its halls, but unwilling to submit to that discipline 
 without which progress is impossible. Such 
 persons can rarely understand the burning of the 
 early fervour of which I spoke as the type of the 
 first stage of the Christian life, and can form but 
 little notion of that discipline of patience which 
 leads through experience to the assurance of hope, 
 which is the type of the second. 
 
 But now come we to those gifted favoured 
 souls, who reach the third and the maturer stage 
 of the Christian life on the one hand, or the 
 higher development of the intellect on the other. 
 In either case the precious gift comes alike from 
 God ; even from that Divine Spirit which divideth 
 unto every man severally as He wills. 
 
 In the confirmed Christian, his aims after as- 
 similation to the divine pattern of Christ his 
 Saviour, his instantaneous reference of his hopes, 
 his projects, his cares, to the will of God, have 
 now become not so much the effects of a conscious 
 effort, as a habit. His life has become a prayer 
 
72 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PIWGKESS 
 
 and a thanksgiving ; obedience to Him is now 
 almost an intuition : in his glad heart, — 
 
 " Love is an unerring light ; 
 He does God's will and knows it not." 
 
 I know that these attainments in the Christian 
 life are rare, but then they are actual ; for their 
 possession by this regenerate heart it was, that 
 Christ died, that Evangelists wrote, and that 
 Apostles preached : for the birth, and sustenance, 
 and erowth of this sanctification, the Church of 
 Christ exists in visible form, with its holy sacra- 
 ments and its ordinances of grace : nay, for further- 
 ance of our own nurture in these graces of the 
 Spirit, are we not here met to-day ? 
 
 True, I cannot take so lofty a flight in the case 
 of the higher and more perfected form of the 
 human intellect ; for intellect comes not so nigh 
 to the throne of God as love. Nevertheless, the 
 true philosopher has his great intuitions also. 
 He, too, sees the things around, not with the eyes 
 of uncultured ordinary men, but in all created 
 things around him he discerns order and law, 
 fitnesses and adaptations, benignity and power. 
 The ears of his spirit drink in the harmonies ot 
 nature. That which in the advanced Christian, 
 partakes of the nature of inspiration, in the philo- 
 sopher becomes discovery. There are, moreover, 
 many qualities of the mind common to them both; 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 73 
 
 candour, for instance, and the love of the truth ; 
 but beyond all there is the grace of a childlike 
 humility ; for each of them knows by what slow 
 and painful steps he has arrived, the one at the 
 knowledge of God and of his own heart ; the 
 other, at a perception of the orderly adaptations 
 of nature and the relation of things created. Each 
 knows that his powers have been to him, from 
 first to last, a gift} and that being gifts, they 
 carry with them responsibilities. Each feels in 
 the depths of his spirit that he has not yet attained 
 to his aspirations and his hopes, and he knows 
 that immeasurably more lies before him than 
 behind him. As a little child and as a learner, 
 each entered upon his new life ; as a child and as 
 a learner still, each knows that here he must 
 quit it. 
 
 In thus rapidly tracing some few of the ana- 
 logies between the true life spiritual and the life 
 intellectual, it seems as if we had all along been 
 speaking of two separate beings, but in truth we 
 have been speaking of two phases of the life of 
 one and the same man ; for each one of us is 
 endowed with affections and with a mind ; to each 
 of us God has given a loving and a thinking]^ 
 power; though possibly these two powers are, 
 after all, only different sides of the same thing. 
 
 ^ " 'Autos idwKev." See the note on page 63. 
 
74 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 There cannot then be any true, any necessary 
 antagonism between the pursuit of knowledge and 
 the love of God. And mark you, on whichever 
 side that antagonism is permitted to exist, and 
 fully up to the measure of its existence, that 
 antagonism is artificial, and a sure sign, not of the 
 strength, but of the essential weakness, of the love. 
 For that love of God must be weak indeed which 
 shuns, and is afraid of, the contemplation of God's 
 works ; and that pursuit of knowledge must be 
 languid and unworthy of the name, which shuns 
 and is afraid of, the knowledge of Him who 
 created all that can be known. In this shines 
 forth the Divine philosophy of that Holy Book, 
 where it is written, "There is no fear in love:" 
 " Perfect love casteth out fear." 
 
 But now, for one brief moment, let us imagine 
 the graces of the Christian faith to be superadded 
 by the gift of God to the graces of natural know- 
 ledge. Then all created things assume to the 
 eyes of that man's affections a new and a holier 
 aspect. In the plan and in the laws which bind 
 all material things together, his soul with joy 
 recognises the wisdom of Him who framed the 
 plan and prescribed the law. In the varied 
 contrivances with which all nature teems, his 
 understanding traces with a reverential love the 
 mind of the Divine Contriver. In the beauty and 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 75 
 
 the joy with which all animated things are re- 
 dolent, he reads the tenderness and the fatherly 
 character of the Creator,— " the very least as 
 feeling His care, and the greatest as not exempt 
 from His power." 
 
 And if, in his brother man, he is compelled 
 sometimes to acknowledge traces of an unholy, 
 unloving spirit, then the Christian philosopher 
 thinks not only of his own infirmities, and of that 
 Divine grace by which they are subdued, but he 
 looks through beyond the unholy and unloving 
 man, at the man as the man may be, and as 
 he hopes will be: he sees the man redeemed; 
 the Christ within the man ; he forgets the sinner, 
 and his spirit is at peace. 
 
 Do you hesitate, and ask me for examples of 
 this happy combination of intellectual strength 
 with the Christian spirit ? I will select then at 
 once the brightest names in the annals of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 In the spirit of this Law, Kepler wrote; 
 Kepler, the first and the greatest among the 
 pioneers of modern science. Not a few of Kepler's 
 writings are a prayer. 
 
 In the spirit of this Law, Pascal, endowed of 
 God with a genius second to that of no child of 
 man, bequeathed for an everlasting possession to 
 the Church of Christ, " THOUGHTS " which burn. 
 
76 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 In the spirit of this Law, Newton year by year 
 devoted a sum of money for the purchase and 
 distribution of copies of the Bible. 
 
 In the spirit of this Law, Leibnitz, that great 
 and subtle geometer, with a zeal and a learning 
 unsurpassed, devoted the prime of his life to the 
 assuaging of the fatal animosities between the 
 Lutherans and the Romanists of his day, saying 
 to each of them, " Sirs, ye be brethren, be at one." 
 
 Nay, did the time and propriety permit, I 
 could remind you of the names of a host of living 
 Christian Philosophers, whose writings would refute 
 the weak fond calumny that the religion of the 
 Cross of Christ has become among them as a fable 
 of the past, and obsolete. 
 
 One great name, however, still remains, and with 
 it I conclude. It was among the names of living 
 men when I first was requested to prepare this 
 address to you, it is now the name of one living 
 among the blessed. It is but little for me to 
 remind you that a greater philosopher than 
 Michael Faraday ^ has rarely been known 
 among us within the memory of recent times ; 
 but I am bold to add that never have we known 
 a man who more perfectly exhibited the meek- 
 ness, the peaceableness, the humility, the blame- 
 lessness of the true child of God. I am not 
 
 ^ Faraday died on vSunday, August 25th, 1867. 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWTH 77 
 
 consciously exaggerating when I say there went 
 forth a virtue from that Christian man, which 
 made those who had come from his presence feel 
 happier, and, I may venture to say, even better men. 
 Think not I am thus striving to laud the creature. 
 I am rather acknowledging the Creator by whose 
 divine spirit our Faraday was made what he was. 
 Yet this great and good man never obtruded 
 the strength of his faith upon those whom he 
 publicly addressed ; upon principle he was habitu- 
 ally reticent on such topics, because he believed 
 they were ill suited for the ordinary assemblages 
 of men. Yet on more than one occasion, when he 
 had been discoursing on some of the magnificent 
 prearrangements of Divine Providence, so lavishly 
 scattered in nature, I have seen him struggle to 
 repress the emotion which was visibly striving for 
 utterance ; and then at last, with one single far- 
 reaching word, he would just hint at his meaning 
 rather than express it. On such occasions he 
 only who had ears to hear, could hear. 
 
 Yet with all this gentleness and tenderness of 
 nature, Faraday was a man of resolute decision ; 
 for his gentleness was not so much constitutional 
 to the man, as it was the result of religious 
 conviction. 
 
 For my own part, I know little that is more 
 touchin^T than one habit of this great and good 
 
78 ANALOGY OF INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS 
 
 man's life. During the week, or a part of it, his 
 thoughts, as you know, would be occupied in those 
 deep investigations of nature which will make his 
 name honoured wherever the annals of science are 
 read : but when the week's work was done, and 
 often when the day's work was done, he would 
 quietly retire among a few plain, and for the most 
 part poor Christian people, whose aim is to live 
 after what they conceive to be the model of the 
 primitive Apostolic church ; and there, I am told, 
 he would open the Bible and expound the Scrip- 
 tures with a benign tenderness, and childlike 
 simplicity, and depth of personal experience, which 
 would have astonished, had it not so gravely 
 impressed, his hearers. Strange to say, some of 
 the last of these loving expositions of God's Holy 
 Word were ministered in this very town less than 
 four years ago.^ 
 
 1 There are one or two circumstances connected with this great 
 and good man's later days which seem to me to be well worthy of 
 a record. I was told that on the last occasion of his visit to his 
 little flock of Christians in Dundee, on opening the Bible to give 
 the usual exposition, he asked his audience to pardon him if in his 
 quotations of the Scriptures he was inexact in his words. " You 
 remember it was not always so," he said ; and my informant, a 
 Deacon in the little (Sandemanian) Church, added : " And his 
 face shone as the face of an angel." 
 
 The seeds of his approaching death were already sown. 
 
 Again. In the course of a railway journey, accompanied by a 
 well-known friend, the latter availed himself of the opportunity to 
 ask him what opinions he really entertained respecting a future 
 
TO RELIGIOUS GROWril 79 
 
 For Michael Faraday it were incongruous 
 to erect a statue of marble, or of bronze. His 
 fame is in his work. Do you, who listen, thank 
 God who giveth such grace to man. Let us who 
 survive him, and who knew him, let us strive by 
 our example to hand down the image of his char- 
 acter to the generation that succeeds us. Suffice 
 it to say, that in him was exhibited the truth of 
 that Divine Philosophy of the Gospel of Christ, 
 where it is written : 
 
 " Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit 
 THE Earth. 
 Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall 
 SEE God." 
 
 life. Faraday, with that well -remembered gesture of the folded 
 hands which, when greatly interested, he assumed, replied : " Eye 
 hath not seen, nor hath the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the 
 mind of man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared." 
 
 I 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO 
 
 THE CONTINUITY OF THE DIVINE 
 
 THOUGHT FOR MAN 
 
 A Discourse delivered by Request at the Meeting of the British 
 Association at Exeter in 1869 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It was not without great hesitation that I accepted 
 an invitation from the proper authorities once 
 more to preach before many of my colleagues in 
 Science and Theology, at a meeting of the British 
 Association. Indeed, I should have ultimately de- 
 clined this difficult and responsible office, had it 
 not so happened that the address of the eminent 
 philosopher ^ who presided over that learned body 
 was directed chiefly to a branch of knowledge 
 with which it had been my official duty to be- 
 come sufficiently acquainted. I availed myself, 
 therefore, of this opportunity to show that the 
 very recent and truly wonderful revelations of 
 Spectrum Analysis, which formed a main current 
 of thought at the Exeter meeting, contained, 
 when properly interpreted, the most ancient 
 prophecy of the Divine Mindfulness for Man. 
 In support of this view, and throughout the 
 1 Dr. Huggins, F.R.S. 
 
84 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 greater portion of this address from the pulpit, 
 I have assumed the truth of some Nebular Hypo- 
 thesis for the formation of our Solar System. 
 I have done so, because (i) There is an un- 
 questionable community of elementary materials 
 forming, alike and in the main, the photospheric 
 atmospheres of our Sun, and the strata of our 
 Earth ; (2) Many of the Nebulae certainly 
 contain some, and may possibly contain all, of these 
 elements ; (3) The two Herschels have shown 
 that celestial nebulous masses are observed in all 
 stages of condensation, from mere vaporous whiffs 
 to the half-consolidated forms of nebulous stars ; 
 and, lastly. Because Laplace and others have de- 
 monstrated the high probability that such masses 
 of vapour might, consistently with the known 
 laws impressed upon natural substances, ultimately 
 form solid bodies similar in all essential respects 
 to those of the Sun and its attendant planets. 
 
 These things being so, that is to say, being at 
 least an approximately true representation of the 
 fact, we next observe that coal and building 
 materials, iron and the other metals, which in 
 the remote ages of the past existed in a state of 
 nebulous incandescence, now form the chief in- 
 struments for securing the civilisation and intel- 
 lectual advancement of mankind. Here then we 
 have at least three distinct and independent sets 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 85 
 
 of elements or factors. First, we observe an 
 abundant supply of the materials in course of 
 preparation throughout ages inconceivably remote ; 
 (2) There is the present capacity of a race of 
 intelligent beings to use these materials ; (3) 
 An unquestionable result of their application, 
 and of the mental efforts necessary to make that 
 application, has been to advance that race of 
 beings in the scale of created existences, with the 
 prospect of a vast and still further advancement. 
 Now, put these independent elements or con- 
 currences together, and there arises a probability 
 of infinity against nothing, that their co-existence 
 is not the result of chance. Grant further, what 
 the greatest of ancient and modern philosophers 
 have accepted as inevitable ; grant the existence 
 in nature of an all-pervading and powerful Will, 
 and you have, as worked out by Spectrum 
 Analysis, a testimony to the mindfulness of that 
 Divine Will for man, pre-existing throughout the 
 inconceivably remote ages of the past. This is 
 the testimony of Science ; and, be it observed, the 
 testimony of Science in its most recent, most 
 unexpected, and most wonderful development. 
 
 In the Hulsean Lectures, addressed to the 
 University of Cambridge in 1867, I have pointed 
 out a similar prolonged prophecy in the slow 
 deposit of those coalfields which in modern 
 
86 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 times have played so important a part in the 
 development of human genius, and in the civilisa- 
 tion of our species. I then spoke of these 
 primeval forests as containing, implicitly, the most 
 ancient prophecies of the Divine goodwill to 
 man.^ It did not then occur to me, as it well 
 might have done, that we have a similar, but 
 immensely antecedent, testimony to the Divine 
 beneficence in those telescopic patches of nebulous 
 light, which strew the heavens in a certain peculiar 
 and orderly arrangement. The antiquity (I had 
 almost used the word eternity) of these nebulous 
 masses probably exceeds the antiquity of the 
 primeval coal forests by at least as much as the 
 latter exceed, in the order of time, those marvellous 
 uses which they subserve for man at the present 
 hour. I know that such comparisons of remote 
 and protracted antiquity are vain, they exceed 
 and evade our powers of contemplation ; never- 
 theless we read therein what we may fairly term 
 the Continuity of the Divine Mindfulness for 
 
 Man. 
 
 A few notes have been added to this sermon. 
 In one of them I have pointed out, so far as the 
 space properly allowable to a publication of this 
 nature admits, what seems to be a remarkable 
 continuity of plan observable in the prophetic 
 
 1 Hulsean Lectures for 1867, pp. ii-i5- 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 87 
 
 portions of the Old Testament. I allude to the 
 secondary meaning which runs throughout its pro- 
 phetic and devotional utterances.^ This secondary- 
 meaning extends from Genesis, through the Psalms, 
 to Malachi. Their applications to the particular 
 circumstances under which they were uttered are 
 sufficiently clear and distinct ; and yet the 
 language in which they are couched generally 
 overruns and exceeds the emergencies which 
 called them forth, and finds a more ^ntivQ fulfil- 
 ment in one remote series of Messianic events, 
 which occurred many centuries after their first 
 enunciation. If the truth of these secondary 
 fulfilments is logically established, running, as the 
 original utterances do, through so many books 
 and so many centuries, then there is evidence of 
 the continuity of a plan and of a forethought 
 which cannot be less than Divine. An instance 
 of this secondary meaning occurs in connection 
 with the Psalm from which the text of this sermon 
 is taken. For this line of thought I am indebted 
 to a private communication from one of our most 
 learned prelates, Bishop Ollivant of Llandaff. 
 
 In another note,^ connected with the existence 
 
 of the metallic elements, such as iron, etc., in the 
 
 atmospheric envelopes of our Sun, if not also in 
 
 the Nebulae, I have pointed out, what has probably 
 
 1 Note A. ^ Note B. 
 
88 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 escaped the notice of the general reader, that the 
 bare possibiHty of the modern developments of 
 human genius and of social progress, have arisen 
 very much from the essential characteristics of the 
 metals, and the application of mineral fuel to their 
 manipulation. 
 
 Throughout the many discourses, or essays, 
 which it has been my privilege to address to 
 learned and thoughtful men, whether in the 
 University of Cambridge, or the British Associa- 
 tion, or Church Congresses, it has been my aim 
 and my hope to convince others, as I am con- 
 vinced myself, that so far from the existence of 
 a natural antagonism, there is a divine bond of 
 correlation between the revelation of God's will, 
 when properly interpreted, in His ancient Word, 
 and that which (in a lower degree) is deducible 
 from the ever-present manifestations of His ever- 
 present works. Nature and grace, as I see them, 
 are not in conflict, they are in continuity. They 
 bear the impress of the same wise and beneficent 
 forethought. 
 
 No doubt the unexampled mental activity of 
 the present age, its rapid discoveries, its fearless 
 questionings into the rights and relations of things, 
 its re-examinations of principles long since believed 
 to be settled and understood ; and in the midst 
 of all this, the unquestionable abounding of wrong, 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 89 
 
 must necessarily evoke pain and an uneasy 
 apprehension in many pious and sensitive minds. 
 Nevertheless, it is in this way that the great tide 
 wave of human development is ordained to 
 advance. For a time this process is troublesome 
 and painful ; and as the tidal wave slowly but 
 surely advances, some barks which rested on an 
 insecure anchorage get adrift and are stranded ; still, 
 it is in this way alone that the great estuaries, and 
 creeks, and havens are filled from the ocean of truth. 
 I know not whether words or testimony of 
 mine may in the slightest degree avail to check 
 the despondency or remove the apprehension of 
 any young clergyman who may be doubtful as 
 to the generic tendency of scientific pursuits ; 
 but this much I may say, that, after a life, already 
 not a short one, spent in the study of Science and of 
 Philosophical Divinity, and living in equal intimacy 
 with men of science and with thoughtful divines, 
 I have learned nothing which can reasonably 
 disturb an impartial mind, either in its conviction 
 of the truths of Christianity as interpreted by the 
 more moderate sections of the Christian Church, 
 or in its acceptance of the divine inspiration of 
 the sacred Scriptures, not indeed as literal or 
 punctual, but as generic and substantial. I am 
 equally assured that the general development of 
 human knowledge is friendly to these convictions. 
 
PSALMS VIII AND XIX 
 
 "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers; the 
 moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained ; What is 
 man, that Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that 
 Thou visitest him ? . . . There is neither speech nor language, 
 but their voices are heard among them." 
 
 It is now three thousand years ago that a young 
 shepherd, tending his sheep by night on the hills 
 of an obscure village in one of the most secluded 
 corners of the earth, moved by a divine impulse, 
 burst forth into a hymn of praise, which has be- 
 come the common inheritance of pious hearts ever 
 since. The canopy of heaven lay stretched above 
 him like a curtain studded with spangles of light ; 
 and as the bright stars came out one after another 
 in that eastern sky, with a brilliancy and a 
 splendour almost unimaginable to ourselves, his 
 mind glanced upwards, through and beyond these 
 lights, to the throne of the great God of his 
 fathers ; to Jehovah, of whose glory those stars 
 were the heralds and the types. High above the 
 
I 
 
 DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 91 
 
 rest of God's magnificent creation, these hosts of 
 heaven moved onwards in their stately march, 
 silent and speechless ; but within his own well- 
 tutored spirit (for God was his teacher) there is 
 the whisper of a still small voice : 
 
 ♦'Jehovah our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, 
 Who hast set Thy glory above the heavens ! " 
 
 And the reply of his own lips is in unison, — 
 
 " When I see Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, 
 The moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained ; 
 
 What is man, that Thou are mindful of him, 
 And the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? 
 
 That having made him a little lower than God,^ 
 Thou crownest him with glory and honour?" 
 
 Now many of US must have often put to ourselves 
 the question, what did the inspired poet mean by 
 those happily familiar but memorable words of 
 his, WJiat is man? Most interpreters, perhaps 
 all the ancient ones, have considered that the 
 insignificance of man is the thought uppermost 
 in the Psalmist's mind. I have long believed, 
 and I still venture to believe, the reverse. The 
 insignificance of man may, for an instant, have 
 naturally occurred to the Psalmist's mind, as he 
 mused in the lonely watches of the night, and in 
 the midst of the grandeur around him ; but the 
 thought would be chased away, soon as it was 
 conceived. These stars, and yon stately moon, 
 
 1 Dean Perowne on the Psalms. (See Note C.) 
 
92 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 are glorious indeed ; glorious also and vast are all 
 those other works of Jehovah's hands, which they 
 illumine and surround ; and yet, insignificant as 
 he seems at the first, how much more glorious 
 must Man in reality be, to whom is consigned the 
 dominion over them all, and who was created only 
 a little lower than God ! 
 
 " Thou madest him a little lower than God ; 
 Thou crownest him with glory and honour. 
 Thou makest him to have dominion over the works 
 of Thy hands ; 
 Thou hast put all things under his feet." 
 
 Such, we are persuaded, is at least an ap- 
 proximation to the feelings of the inspired man, 
 when he breathed forth this hymn of surpassing 
 beauty. Three thousand years, as we have said, 
 have rolled away since David thus mused on the 
 hills of Bethlehem. He knew little or nothing of 
 what those stars were, beyond this, that they were 
 the creations of the hand of his fathers' God ; 
 nevertheless, the prophetic intuitions of his mind 
 suggested to him that, in some way or other, they 
 told a tale of the greatness of man. Since his 
 day, other prophets have arisen ; Prophets of 
 Nature, expounders of the works of God, men 
 inspired, we doubt not, like Bezaleel, with a lofty 
 genius, and gifted with patience to apply it ; and 
 these have disclosed to us many a wonder in those 
 stars, such as poets in their wildest fancies never 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 93 
 
 dreamed of: and that, too, by methods, and with 
 a precision, not less wonderful than the facts in 
 the discoveries themselves. These suns, which by 
 their distance and their brightness seem to defy 
 the access of all human cognisance, have yielded 
 to the eye and the questionings of science, properly 
 directed, strong and unmistakable evidence that 
 they were, from the very first, created as parts of 
 a divine, magnificent plan, intended in the fulness 
 of time to subserve the wellbeing of intelligent 
 creatures. Among the myriads of other suns, 
 our own sun, if we interpret his parable aright, 
 was formed with the original but far distant inten- 
 tion of not merely sustaining the physical life of 
 an endless variety of animated beings, but 
 especially to be the means of developing the 
 intellectual, and to some extent the moral, qualities 
 of a being such as man ; to bring him, in fact, 
 nigher and nigher to the Universal Father, who 
 has endued him with the intellectual capacity of 
 understanding his works, and with the higher capa- 
 city of holding communion with the Spirit of Him, 
 who breathed into his soul the breath of an endless 
 life. This, then, is our subject : it is a glance 
 upwards, from the Creator's works to the loving 
 discernment of some little portion of the Creator's 
 plan and the Creator's will. 
 
 But a thesis such as this ; the original and 
 
94 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 necessary connection, that is, of the stars and our 
 sun, with the development of the intellectual and 
 moral faculties of man, may seem strange at its 
 first enunciation, and may possibly be received 
 with the hesitation of some doubt Nevertheless, 
 I feel assured that you will, in the sequel, come to 
 pretty much the same conclusion as myself, that 
 this is the true interpretation of the newly-learnt 
 language of the heavens, and the legitimate 
 conclusion to which we are brought by the 
 contemplation of many of those arrangements in 
 Nature with which we are familiar : they are parts 
 of a divine plan to bring us nearer and nearer to 
 God. 
 
 It may indeed be, that to the sensibilities of 
 some Christian minds such a thesis as this may 
 also seem for a moment to jar with the thought 
 of that humility which befits creatures like our- 
 selves, in our present confessedly low and fallen 
 estate ; and there may be a pre-conception that it 
 is not compatible with those revealed and higher 
 methods by which man is to be brought into 
 communion with the Spirit of his Maker : but we 
 must not forget that the Creator works by a 
 multiplicity of means ; and we can gradually learn 
 His will, only by taking into true account all the 
 phenomena with which He surrounds us, the 
 revelations in His written word being the greatest 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 95 
 
 and the most necessary among them. HumiHty 
 also shines the most brightly when she walks at 
 the side of her sister, Hope, and in the consciousness 
 of the possession of faculties yet to be developed. 
 I doubt not that with myself you have often 
 read some such language as the following, falling 
 from the pens of pious but (as I think) mistaken 
 writers : — " Man finds himself placed on a little 
 planet, whose comparative insignificance is such, 
 that were it struck from the face of creation, its 
 fate would be like that of a falling star, which 
 loses itself in the heavens and is remembered no 
 more. And as to himself, what an atom is he ! 
 WJiat an atom is he ! How humbling and appall- 
 ing is the thought !"^ Now I, for one, confess to 
 little sympathy with any such thought. For this 
 thought does not seem to be language applicable 
 to an immortal spirit, for which the Son of God 
 became incarnate, and for which Christ died : it 
 has nothing in common with a redeemed and 
 immortal spirit, capable of coimminion ivitJi the 
 StLpreme. Surely nothing is intrinsically little, 
 which is capable of great conceptions ; nor can 
 any spirit be intrinsically ignoble, which is capable, 
 like man's, of noble aspirations. There is a sense 
 in which even the highest philosophy is the philo- 
 sophy of hope. 
 
 1 Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons, l^y Dr. Duncan. 
 
96 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 I said that our present subject was not so 
 much the revelation of the glory of God displayed 
 by the stars, as the intimation of a portion of His 
 will and of the unity of His plan, to be gathered 
 thence by those who have the heart and the 
 diligence to decipher their language. But herein 
 I fear I must ask you, for a few minutes, to avail 
 yourselves of that curious faculty, God's gift to 
 you, by which you throw your thoughts back- 
 ward to the ages before the genesis of the 
 stars themselves. I must ask you to contemplate 
 in your imagination one of those seemingly little 
 nebulous patches of dim, icy light, which the eye 
 of science is permitted to observe scattered hither 
 and thither, though not in disorder, amidst the 
 heavens. I say nothing of their distance, it is at 
 present by us immeasurable : I can give you no 
 account of the vast extent of their diffusion, to us 
 at present it is inconceivable. Icy enough these 
 patches seem in their pale, fleecy light, but modern 
 thought traces therein masses of metallic vapoitr 
 glowing with a heat and a light, defying perhaps 
 the power of man, even in all his dominion over the 
 elements of nature, to evoke or to imitate.-^ They 
 are not stars as yet, nor systems of stars : they 
 are rather the birth spots and the material for 
 
 1 Since this was written, Mr. Lockyer believes these nebulous 
 lights are due to the collisions of meteors, evolving thereby a heat 
 not exceeding that of a Bunsen flame. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 97 
 
 future suns. They are such as our own sun and 
 our own system once w^ere, in the womb of time. 
 
 You have, many of you, heard from the gifted 
 man who worthily presides over the Association 
 now assembled in your city, that amidst such or 
 similar masses of celestial vapour, you have the 
 unquestionable traces of the presence of just those 
 terrestrial substances which to human cognisance 
 are the most familiar, such as hydrogen, and 
 nitrogen, and carbon, and iron, and lime. I 
 hesitate not to use terms so unwonted in this 
 sacred place, and on this the best day of all the 
 seven ; for are they not all the creations of our 
 great Father's hands ? are they not the indications 
 of our Father's mind ; revelations accorded to 
 the patient study of our Father's works ? But it 
 is not now the mere existence of substances so 
 familiar, in those remote regions of, to us, a 
 boundless space, which once we little supposed we 
 were endowed of God with faculties to pierce ; 
 it is not, I say, their mere existence that I ask you 
 to observe, but rather I wish you to note the fact 
 that these are just the very elements which are 
 ordained for the construction of an animal frame, 
 and just the very elements w^hich are essential to 
 clothe and to sustain it. What is far more to our 
 present purpose, I see in such nebulous patches of 
 inconceivably distant light, the genesis of that 
 
 H 
 
98 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 iron and of those minerals and elements which, 
 in the case of our own planet, are at this moment 
 wisely and beneficently taxing and straining the 
 powers of tJie Jinman mind, and by tJiis taxing and 
 strainings are ordained to develop and improve 
 them. 
 
 The time and the place properly restrain me 
 from speaking at any length regarding the majestic 
 evolutions of these glowing vapours, whereby, as 
 they revolved, they successively threw off mass after 
 mass, which, on slowly cooling, consolidated into 
 planets like the firm globe on which we stand, 
 leaving the far larger and central mass to give 
 light, and warmth, and vitality to the worlds thus 
 ordained to nestle and circulate around it. It is 
 true that no astronomer as yet has seen any one 
 of these hot flocculent masses of vapour actually 
 passing through its various stages of evolution •} 
 for this is the result of ages upon ages of time, 
 beyond human conception ; but we have seen, 
 and w^e may still see, many of them in different 
 stages of their progress to a more consolidated 
 form. Sir William Herschel, who, by his sagacity 
 and indomitable patience, first brought these mighty 
 operations in the skies within human cognisance, 
 observed, in the spirit of a true philosophy, that 
 
 1 Mr. Lockyer believes he can trace this growth of condensation 
 in the spectra of the stars themselves. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 99 
 
 It can make no real difference in our conception 
 of the growth of a particular tree, whether we saw 
 that one tree actually growing under our eyes, or 
 at several times saw different trees of the same 
 kind in various stages of their growth. So it is 
 that we can see and can delineate at the present 
 hour many nebulae in apparently various stages of 
 condensation into a sun ; nay, it was but a day or 
 two ago that intelligence came among yourselves 
 how there is decisive evidence that at least one 
 of these vaporous masses has changed its form 
 within the lifetime of a single observer. No doubt 
 you will hear from high authority to-morrow how 
 we can daily see the mighty seethings and gigantic 
 contortions of the glowing vapours of our own sun. 
 Such, we are persuaded, is the true interpreta- 
 tion of those words of surpassing sublimity with 
 which the inspired records of God's grace to 
 man commence : " In the beginning God created 
 the heavens and the earth, and the earth was 
 without form and void." But it is not even from 
 this point of view that I wish to present the 
 subject before you ; I rather wish you to regard 
 this wonderful evolution of the worlds (creation 
 you may call it, if you please). I wish you to 
 regard this mighty evolution as a magnificent 
 prolepsis of the Divine intention ; I wish you to 
 recognise therein the earliest propJiccy of a portion, 
 
lOO TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 at least, of the plan and the will of the Supreme 
 Creator. I look into the vista of the ages that 
 are past, and I read in this evolution of our world, 
 a beneficent intention that, in the slow fulness 
 of time, an intelligent being such as man should 
 there find a habitation fitted by the Divine hand 
 for his abode and for his development 
 
 His Creator gives not to him, as with a lavish 
 hand He gives to His lower creatures, beautiful 
 habitations to live in, constructed by no skilful 
 prescience of their own ; He gives not to vian^ as 
 He gives to them and to the lilies of the field, a 
 beautiful array to clothe them, the product of no 
 toil of theirs, and spun by no loom of their own 
 contrivance ; but the bright revolving worlds above 
 tell us, that in the ages past God by the fiat of His 
 word stored away for man materials wherewith to 
 build mansions for himself, materials wherewith to 
 spin clothing for his body, and the elements from 
 whence, at the bidding of his own volition, he 
 shall procure the bread that strengthens, and the 
 wine that cheers him. 
 
 But more than this, and, be it remembered, 
 quite independent of these material stores, God 
 has also given His responsible creature a capacity 
 to build and to spin ; better still, He has given 
 him a capacity to discern the mind, and a coniviand 
 to love the Fatherly Spirit, of the Omnipotent 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN loi 
 
 Giver. And when I see the palaces and the 
 sacred temples, pyramids and iron roads, canals 
 and docks, steam hammers and hydraulic cranes, 
 the products of man's constructive art ; when I see 
 the tissues of his loom vying with the gossamer's 
 web, and the colours of his chemistry emulating 
 the tints of the setting sun ; then so far from the 
 shadow of pride obscuring my spirit, or the foot 
 of pride misleading my steps, my mind glances 
 through and beyond the genius of God's gifted 
 creatures, far away to the throne of the Father 
 and the Creator, who, ages upon ages ago, was 
 providing for His child all things richly to enjoy, 
 and then ultimately inspired him with powers and 
 capacities which, just in proportion as he applies 
 them, improve and improve, and bring him nigher 
 and nigher to the Divine. 
 
 And if, again, it has been said in no reverent 
 spirit, that it is not so much the glory of God as 
 the glory of a Newton and a Herschel which is 
 now displayed in the heavens, then I accept with 
 gratitude the saying, so far as the glory of the 
 creature is concerned ; but my spirit soon glances 
 away to that Eternal Mind, the mere fragments of 
 whose thoughts comprise and contain all that ever 
 has been, or ever can be, reflected from the mind 
 of the created. 
 
 Thus the most recent and the most remarkable 
 
I02 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 acquisition that has been made in modern times 
 to our knowledge of the sidereal heavens, leads to 
 a fresh and I may say to an unexpected discern- 
 ment of the remoteness and continuity of the 
 Divine plan. We see how in the wonderful 
 evolutions by which it is God's will that the 
 worlds are formed, there has been slowly laid up 
 a rich store of materials for the future uses of an 
 intelligent and responsible inhabitant. But it is at 
 the same time ordained that he shall draw forth 
 these rich materials not without the sweat of his 
 brow ; nor appropriate them to his purposes apart 
 from the diligent and toilsome exertion of his 
 inventive powers. In this way man is by labour 
 ordained to subdue the earth ; and better than 
 that, by diligent exertion in the midst of difficulty, 
 he is ordained to improve and exalt his powers, 
 and transmit them to his posterity thus improved. 
 I know not where this onward progress is to stop, 
 short of an approach to the mind of the Supreme. 
 And just so it is with the higher faculties of 
 the soul of man, with the affections of his heart ; 
 these can only be matured and grow up to their 
 perfection in the image of Christ, through the 
 discipline of many a struggle, and the schooling 
 of many a grief: the path of trial and trouble is, 
 I will not say the only path, but it is surely the 
 ordinary path, by which a man becomes acquainted 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 103 
 
 with God, or acquainted with himself. We some- 
 times wonder why a benevolent Father and 
 Creator permits difficulty, and suffering, and slow 
 decay, to form so large a portion of the lot of his 
 creatures ; but constituted, as we are, with im- 
 perfect though improvable faculties and affections, 
 it would be still harder to see how it could have 
 been otherwise with us, consistently with our 
 moral advancement.-^ For it is a matter of 
 experience that the world's noblest and most 
 enduring lessons, its brightest and most effectual 
 examples, come to us, for the most part, through hard- 
 ship and pain ; and it is difficult to see what scope 
 there would be for the exercise and development 
 of the finest of human qualities, such as patience, 
 and sympathy, and bravery, and magnanimity and 
 forbearance, if there were no wrongs to remove or 
 to endure, and no sufferings to assuage. Love 
 has many other phases besides joy ; and wisdom 
 has many other objects to provide for, besides a 
 painless existence. It is said of the greatest and 
 best man this earth has ever seen, the Divine 
 Man, that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief ; and a similar measure must be meted 
 out to his disciples, for they too, like their Master, 
 can only be made perfect by the things which 
 they suffer. 
 
 ^ See Professor Jellett's Sermons on Old Testament Difficulties. 
 
I04 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 So then there is one and the same law ordained 
 for the sanctification of our affections, and for the 
 development of our mental powers ; the law of 
 difficulty, and struggle, and trial. And these, to 
 the conception of the Christian, these are the 
 voices that are heard among the stars, " whose 
 sound is gone out into all lands, and their words 
 unto the ends of the world." 
 
 "Jehovah our Lord ! 
 When I see Thy heavens, the work of Thy hands, 
 The moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, 
 What is man, that Thou are mindful of him, 
 And the son of man, that Thou so visitest him ! " 
 
 We began with the young shepherd visited by 
 the Spirit of the Lord as he mused by night on 
 the hills of Bethlehem. The Christian's thoughts 
 glance along a thousand years, and again rest 
 upon the same hills : but the hills and the 
 shepherds are now surrounded by a greater glory 
 than the splendour of the stars, and they hear the 
 sound of celestial voices more articulate than 
 theirs ; nevertheless " Man " is again the theme ; 
 man in his redemption — the Manhood taken 
 into God. For suddenly upon those hills there 
 was a multitude of the heavenly host praising 
 God, and saying, " Glory to God in the highest, 
 and on earth peace, goodwill to man." For unto 
 them and unto all God's children throughout the 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 105 
 
 world, there was that day born in the city of 
 David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. Thus, 
 we are naturally brought, at the close of our 
 meditations, whither the Christian is so often 
 brought at the close of his own, to the thought of 
 the Incarnation of the Son of God ; to that 
 solemn, fateful event when the manhood was 
 taken into God. I call it fateful, for the Incarna- 
 nation is the one central point of all human history ; 
 the one central light which alone illuminates the 
 hopes and the dignity of the human race. It is 
 thither that the Christian turns in his trials, in his 
 struggles, and even in his aspirations and his joys. 
 He seeks to solve their meaning, but it is " too 
 hard " for him, until he reads them in the light 
 which shines from the lowly manger where the 
 Divine Child lay : it is there, and there only, that 
 he understands " the luhence " and " the ivhithcr of 
 his being ; " whence he came, what he is, and 
 whither he is going : it is there that he finds the 
 remedy that strengthens his weakness, the medicine 
 that removes his sin, the food that sustains his 
 hopes. 
 
 It is alone in the light which streams from 
 Bethlehem, that he can discern who and what 
 that mysterious Man was, who in the streets of 
 Jerusalem, and in the villages of Galilee, went 
 about doing good, as no man had ever done 
 
io6 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 before : intensely human, yet perfectly Divine. 
 It is in this light alone that he understands the 
 words of that Divine Man, who in the courts of 
 the Temple spake as no man ever spake before. 
 It is alone in the light of the Incarnation that he 
 unravels those mysterious words, " I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life," wherewith are consoled 
 not alone the sisters at Bethany, but all Christian 
 mourners scattered throughout the earth, and as 
 long as death shall reign upon this fallen world. 
 It is alone by the light which streams from 
 Bethlehem, that the Christian deciphers the kingly 
 inscription on the Cross at Calvary. Henceforth 
 what a flood of light flows over the present and 
 the future life of Christ's redeemed ! What a 
 pregnant reality shines through all those invitations 
 to a perfect life in this world, and over those 
 promises of glory in a world to come ! For there 
 is henceforth established a brotherhood between 
 the human and the Divine. Herein, then, we see 
 the Divine origin of those passionate yearnings, 
 those " obstinate questionings " which beset the 
 soul : they are the manifestations of the manhood 
 already taken into God ; they are the correlatives 
 here of the higher life which awaits him hereafter ; 
 they are links in the continuity of the human 
 with the Divine. It is hither, also, that we trace 
 the source of those wonderful hopes of illimitable 
 
 I 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 107 
 
 progress held out to the true followers of Christ, 
 which no created being could venture to appropriate, 
 did they not abound in the language of the 
 Scriptures, warranted and explained by the fact 
 of the Incarnation of the Son of God. " Be ye 
 perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect : " this is the language of Christ himself ; 
 and the words of His Apostles are like to it : 
 " partakers of the Divine Nature ; " " growing up 
 into the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ ; " " filled with all the fulness of God." 
 
 So then, the light of modern discovery con- 
 spires with the inspiration of the ancient word, to 
 illuminate the origin, the progress, and the destiny 
 of man. Each of them points to a continuity of 
 the Divine Thought on his behalf That Divine 
 Thought was manifested in the ages of eternity 
 when the heavens and the earth were prophetic 
 vaporous whiffs, without form and void ; it ac- 
 companied the dispensations of history ; it 
 culminated in the promise of a new heaven and 
 a new earth, the abode of holiness and peace, 
 where the man, redeemed by the blood, sanctified 
 by the Spirit, and clothed in the righteousness 
 of Christ, shall grow up into the likeness of God. 
 "Thou madest him a little lower than 
 God, Thou crownest him with glory and 
 
 HONOUR." 
 
NOTES 
 
 A (Page 87) 
 
 ON THE CONTINUITY OF THE METHOD OF PROPHECY 
 
 It has long been remarked that a secondary sense per- 
 vades the prophetical portions of the sacred Scriptures. 
 It appears to run through them systematically. As 
 surely as a crisis of difficulty or sorrow befalls the Church 
 of God during two thousand years, so surely there comes 
 to it a divine communication to lighten its troubles or 
 direct its counsels ; and not only so, but the terms in 
 which the message is conveyed greatly over-reach the 
 temporary difficulties of the crisis itself The language 
 looks through and beyond the crisis, to some greater 
 and higher form of deliverance yet to come. Thus the 
 method of the prophecy, as distinct from its subject, is 
 -characteristic and continuous. 
 
 The Bible opens with an instance of the sort, in the 
 promised victory of the seed of the woman over the 
 serpent who had beguiled her, and the same principle 
 recurs repeatedly in the history of Abraham and his 
 
DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 109 
 
 immediate descendants. The Psalms especially abound 
 with expressions having a secondary meaning, for while 
 the sacred poetry seems to flow spontaneously from the 
 innermost consciousness of the writer, and while it 
 embraces, and sincerely expresses, the actual emotions 
 of his spirit at the moment, nevertheless, it not seldom 
 overruns the circumstances of his actual condition, and 
 requires some special interpretation, which, at the moment 
 of utterance, must have been obscure. It is here un- 
 necessary to select specific instances of this secondary 
 meaning ; they will naturally suggest themselves in 
 sufficient abundance to the reader's memory. There is, 
 however, one of them, which, though it is far from pos- 
 sessing any crucial importance, nevertheless is not with- 
 out its own interest here, from its connection with the 
 text of the sermon. "Thou hast put all things under 
 his feet " is the language of David in the sixth verse ; 
 and when he adds, " All sheep and oxen, yea, and the 
 beasts of the field," it becomes sufficiently apparent that 
 while he contemplated the power of man over the greater 
 physical strength of many of the animals, we may be 
 assured that he especially thought also of his own conflict 
 with the lion and the bear, the memory of which also 
 occurred to him in the most dangerous crisis of his life, 
 while standing before the Philistine giant. The truth of 
 his words was, and still is, exemplified, no doubt, in man's 
 general dominion over nature even in that day, and still 
 more so in his control over the forces of nature in the 
 present age ; but the words themselves receive their full 
 and intense accomplishment, they are alone fulfilled in 
 the case of Him who took the manhood into God, who 
 has put, or who will put, sin, and death, and hell, under 
 
no TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 his feet, and who reigns supreme over the hearts of his 
 redeemed and sanctified people. 
 
 A similar thread, but one of a more decided colour, 
 runs throughout the prophetic books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and will be found, as a characteristic feature, in 
 by far the greater part of the Messianic predictions. 
 
 If this be true ; if this principle, at once remarkable 
 and unique, can be traced throughout a long series of 
 writings, then we have therein a continuity of prophetic 
 method^ which, considering that it prevails through many 
 centuries, and is a characteristic form of utterance by so 
 many prophets in widely distinct ages and conditions of 
 the Church of God, can be indicative of an origin nothing 
 short of Divine. This continuity of an unique 7nethod, 
 be it observed, is entirely distinct from the continuity of 
 prophecy itself as directed, in the main, to the one great 
 event of the Messianic advent ; it is entirely distinct also 
 from a continuity of type, and equally so from any 
 method of mere accommodation of language adopted at 
 the natural suggestion of the writer who cites a quotation. 
 
 No doubt the utterances of natural genius often 
 transcend the circumstances which give them birth ; no 
 doubt they sometimes possess a proleptic capacity, and 
 are, in a certain sense, prophetic ; for in the utterance, 
 the fire of genius within, strives to embody feelings and 
 intuitions which are too great for the language of the 
 hour, and so the burning apothegm springs forth and lives 
 in the memories and experience of men as an everlasting 
 possession. But no amount of natural genius, no amount 
 of the quickening of intellectual or emotional endowments, 
 can account for a long series of utterances, by men of dif- 
 ferent habits, in different ages, and in different grades of 
 
OF DIVIXE THOUGHT FOR MAN iii 
 
 society, such that, while they adequately einbrace and 
 express the junctures and troubles of their oivn day, 
 converge onwards to one single, distant event in the 
 world's history, of which the world's history hitherto had 
 afforded neither presentiment nor parallel. There is a 
 Divine Continuity in the Prophetic Alethod of the sacred 
 Scriptures. 
 
 It may be interesting here to make a passing remark 
 on another characteristic mark of continuity, which 
 attaches to all the prophetic writings throughout the 
 Scriptures. It was (I believe) first observed by Isaac 
 Taylor, in his charming work on the Spirit of the Hebrew 
 Poetry, and to that publication the reader is referred for 
 the fuller exposition of a subject which cannot be entirely 
 grasped in the brief space allowable to a note. I may 
 be permitted to call it th'e Continuity of Individuality in 
 the prophetic utterances. 
 
 These utterances came to the people of God through 
 the agency of a succession of speakers, of every conceiv- 
 able variety of natural temper and social position, from 
 the herdsman to the king, from the warrior to the 
 minister of religion ; they came to the people of God at 
 various intervals, through a thousand years, in all con- 
 ceivable varieties of national fortune ; and yet, no sooner 
 do we read " Thus saith the Lord," than the personal 
 individuality of the Divine Speaker becomes at once 
 apparent. "This consistency" (writes Isaac Taylor), 
 " this exemption from the variableness that attaches 
 always and everywhere else, to whatever is human, is 
 utterly inconceivable until, for its explanation, we bring 
 in the one truth that, whoever might be the prophet 
 
112 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 that challenges the people to a hearing, the Speaker is 
 ever the same : the same in mind and purpose, through 
 a thousand generations. Century after century, through 
 all the shiftings of a people's weal, and of their cor- 
 respondence with their neighbours, God, their God, thus 
 utters His mind. Nothing approaching to this vivid 
 revelation, this bringing the conception of the Person 
 home to the consciousness of men, has elsewhere ever 
 taken place ; it is the peculiarity of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures." It is (let us speak with all reverence) the Con- 
 tinuity of the Divine Individuality. 
 
 B 
 
 With reference to the influence which the greatly 
 extended manufacture of the metals has had upon the 
 general progress of the age, I have expressed my con- 
 viction that the Nebula present to us traces of an original 
 design for the future development of the intelligence of 
 a responsible creature. Nor is it difficult to establish 
 the proposition. For let us consider what it is which 
 has served in modern times, and which still serves so 
 greatly to develop and expand the intellect of man. 
 What is it that constitutes the strong line of demarca- 
 tion which distinguishes modern from ancient thought ? 
 Wherein, and by what means, are the men of these 
 later centuries superior in knowledge, and in mental and 
 material power, to the men of twenty centuries ago ? 
 We are much mistaken if the prophetic elements of this 
 advance in knowledge and power, are not at this present 
 hour discernible in those patches of telescopic light of 
 which we have already said so much. 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 113 
 
 " For let us go back a little, and let us rapidly con- 
 sider for a moment the state of human knowledge before 
 the Christian era ; and, omitting the vast and persistent 
 light shed over almost all the regions of human thought 
 by Christianity itself, let us extend the date to within two 
 or three centuries of our own day. The old Greek 
 philqsopher, by the time of Aristotle more than twenty 
 centuries ago, seems to have exhausted such powers as 
 he then possessed for the contemplation of the structure 
 of his own mind, and for inquiry into the principles of 
 his moral nature. He had, indeed, groped his way to 
 the conviction of the existence of a Supreme Being, and 
 to the high probability of his own immortality : to a 
 select few this future existence had become a hope, but 
 to none was it a principle of action or a guide of life. 
 The sciences of morals and of mind had evidently 
 arrived at their limits for the time. In statuary and 
 architecture the great artists of Greece have bequeathed 
 to posterity their models, which, as yet, their successors 
 have rarely equalled, and have never surpassed. In the 
 structure of a perfect language the writers of Greece have 
 found no equals, and in sweetness and gravity of diction 
 Plato has found no rival. In sublimity and pathos no 
 poems have greatly, if at all, surpassed the Iliad or the 
 Athenian drama. In pure geometry, until lately, there 
 has been little advance beyond the school of Alexandria ; 
 and in arithmetic, although the device of the Arabic 
 notation afforded wonderful facilities for computation, 
 there existed comparatively little that it was worth while 
 to compute. The advance of human knowledge seems, 
 in fact, to have come nearly to a standstill by the 
 century which proceeded Newton. What was it then 
 
 I 
 
114 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 that gave the new impetus by which we moderns so 
 greatly profit ? It was not mainly any new methods of 
 learning so strongly urged and so clearly set forth by 
 Bacon, for his methods had already been the only 
 methods by which all true knowledge had been hereto- 
 fore acquired. Nor was it subsequently even the new 
 philosophy, or the new geometry, or the new discoveries 
 of Newton, that alone and of themselves laid the secure 
 foundation of modern progress, for it is well known that 
 Newton withheld his discovery of gravitation because its 
 results did not square — as square they could not — with 
 the erroneous measurements which then existed of the 
 dimensions of the earth and of its distance from the 
 moon. No, strange to say, it was not so much the 
 philosophy of Bacon or the discoveries of Newton 
 which gave a successful impulse to the new inquiries and 
 to the advance of learning. They came rather from 
 improvements in the art of working in metal, and from 
 that of devising and constructing instruments of precision 
 formed of metal. It was the metallic measuring -rod 
 and the metallic quadrant that set men thinking, and 
 which enabled them to verify or to discard their thoughts. 
 It was better measuring-rods, and better quadrants, and 
 better telescopes, which encouraged Newton to pursue 
 his immortal studies. New instruments in metal, better 
 devised and better graduated, led to better observations, 
 and these again involved the necessity of fresh calcula- 
 tions and of more extended and more accurate methods 
 of mathematical research. And, just as at the present 
 day there is a contest between instruments of destruction 
 and material arrangements for a secure resistance, so, to 
 the great advantage and the furtherance of knowledge 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 115 
 
 there has been since the days of Newton a ceaseless 
 contest, with alternate victories, between the instruments 
 of observation and the methods of numerical research. 
 So it is ultimately mind and metal that are ordained to 
 subdue the earth, and make the elements and the forces 
 of Nature subservient to the intelligence and the will of 
 man. But this mind is the breath of God, and these 
 metals, as we have seen, were, in the far vista of the 
 ages past, stored away by his loving prescience in nebuL^ 
 or meteoric swarms till, in the fulness of time, they were 
 evolved into forms and conditions adapted for the use 
 of man. 
 
 We may form some clearer and more enlarged 
 conception of the manner and the extent to which 
 inventions connected with the working of the metals 
 react upon the intellectual powers, encouraging, cor- 
 roborating, and fitting them for new and higher efforts, 
 if we pause a little, and, by way of example, take a rapid 
 survey of what was implied in the laying of the electric 
 telegraph across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In 
 the first instance, there was the mechanical skill brought 
 to bear upon the building of the iron ship. Its un- 
 precedented dimensions, its form, its materials, demanded 
 new inventions, or new adaptations of old processes, at 
 almost every step in the progress of its construction. A 
 host of mechanics, amateurs, and lookers-on, throughout 
 the length and breadth of the land, taxed and evoked 
 the powers of their minds as they either engaged in the 
 actual work or mused upon or discussed its difficulties 
 and its progress. It is impossible to estimate the magni- 
 tude of the intellectual results arising from this condition 
 of widely spread and active thought. It reminds us of 
 
ii6 TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE TO CONTINUITY 
 
 the fact that, although the calculating machine of Mr. Bab- 
 bage ^ has not yet been fully brought to a practical issue, 
 nevertheless the number of highly skilled and intelli- 
 gent workmen it has served to educate is well known 
 to have effected a very sensible improvement in the 
 manufacture of instruments of most delicate research : 
 the astronomer, the chemist, the student in physics, are 
 reaping at the present hour, and oftea consciously, the 
 benefits arising from the experience and the skill which 
 have been the results of their assisting Mr. Babbage in 
 his efforts. It may even be the case that these indirect 
 and collateral results have conferred upon science and on 
 human intelligence far greater benefits than any that 
 could have accrued from the mere completion and 
 applications of the machine itself 
 
 Nor is the influence of the mechanical applications 
 of the metals confined alone to the upper and more 
 highly educated stratum of society, or to the intellectual 
 faculties of the inventors themselves, but it reaches to 
 that other and far more numerous body whose intelli- 
 gence or whose emulation is stimulated by the sight of 
 the new inventions. The presence of a steam plough 
 or a steam thrashing-machine in a rural district quickens 
 the apprehensions of large masses of the population, 
 whose minds would otherwise remain at the level of 
 
 1 There was a saying very prevalent about the time when Mr. 
 Babbage had just completed his first attempts at a calculating engine, 
 which, inasmuch as it refers to a general and comprehensive principle, 
 is worth handing down to posterity. Mr. Babbage ultimately failed 
 in his main enterprise ; but results followed even greater than success. 
 He was assisted by a clever mechanic named Clements, and Clements 
 again was assisted by Whitworth. It was a saying of the day : 
 "Babbage made Clements, Clements made Whitworth, and Whit- 
 worth made the Tools." 
 
OF DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 117 
 
 Stagnation. A new implement of agriculture excites the 
 curiosity and the questionings of a whole parish. The 
 sight of a steam hammer or a steam crane inevitably 
 exalts our conception of the power of man's genius over 
 brute and apparently unmanageable matter. The sight 
 of an electric telegraph reminds even the villager, of the 
 victory of genius over time and space. 
 
 What has here been adduced regarding the influence 
 of the application of materials, pre-existing in the nebulous 
 elements of the world, to the arts of life, applies just as 
 much to the education of the ancient as it does to that 
 of the modern world. Who can tell what mighty in- 
 fluences for good emanated from the construction of 
 such a building as Milan Cathedral, or the Duomo and 
 its Baptistery at Florence, or the Parthenon ? Yet the 
 elements from which these magnificent structures were 
 built, pre-existed in the ages of an eternity ; and since 
 then they passed through the tissues and the organisms 
 of creatures enjoying the happiness of life, long before 
 they exercised the genius of the architects who devised 
 them or the admiration of the millions who have beheld 
 them. 
 
 It is to thoughts and results not distantly related to 
 these that the greatest of ancient statesmen alludes, when 
 he counsels his audience, the Athenian people, to take 
 a practical survey (e'/oyw deuifxkvoi) ^ of the glories of their 
 city, if they would understand by what sort of education 
 their ancestors had achieved for them the unequalled 
 institutions and the renown of their polity. Arnold 
 never wrote truer or more burning words than in his 
 paraphrase of this noble passage of the Greek historian : 
 
 ^ Thucyd., lib. ii. 43. 
 
Ii8 DIVINE THOUGHT FOR MAN 
 
 " Look at our temples, and the statues which embelHsh 
 them ; go down to Pirseus, observe the long walls, visit 
 the arsenals and the docks of our three hundred ships : 
 frequent our theatres, and appreciate the surpassing 
 excellence of our poets, and the taste and splendour of 
 our scenic representations ; walk through the markets, 
 observe them filled with the productions of every part of 
 the world ; and listen to the sounds of so many dialects 
 and foreign languages which strike your ears in the 
 streets of our city, the resort of the whole world. So 
 learn to know and to value the fruits of civilisation, the 
 child of commerce and of liberty." But I stay, for the 
 subject is inexhaustible. 
 
 I 
 
IV 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE AND NATURAL 
 RELIGION 
 
 An Address read before the Church Congress at Brighton in 1874 
 
Elegantissima haecce solis, planetarum et cometarum compages 
 non nisi consilio et dominio entis intelligentis et potentis oriri 
 potuit . . . Hie omnia regit, non ut anima mundi sed ut univer- 
 sorum dominus . . . Colimus enim ut servi, et Deus sine dominio, 
 providentia, et causis finalibus nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura. 
 Tota rerum conditarum pro locis ac temporibus diversitas ab ideis 
 et voluntate entis necessario existentis modo oriri potuit. Dicitur 
 autem deus per allegoriam videre, audire . . . fabricare, condere, 
 construere. Nam sermo omnis de deo a rebus humanis per simili- 
 tudinem aliquam desumitur, non perfectafn quidem, sed aliqtialevi 
 tamen, — Newton, Scholium Generale, Prindpia. 
 
 Qebs ^duKeu avrl 8^\tov tov Koafiov. — ChrysOSTOM. 
 
 La Nature est une Image de la Grace. — Pascal. 
 
MODERN SCIENCE AND NATURAL 
 RELIGION 
 
 I THINK that the time is come when the rela- 
 tions between science and reHgion are well under- 
 stood, and may be clearly stated. In the present 
 attempt to do so, the trammels of the twenty 
 minutes enforce a brevity which must be fatal to 
 completeness, and possibly fatal also to precision. 
 Nevertheless, I have done what I could under the 
 assurance that, whether I fail or otherwise, neither 
 the interests of science nor those of religfion can 
 be seriously imperilled at the hands of any single 
 writer. 
 
 According, then, to the latest and most authori- 
 tative statement of the new philosophy, it is 
 asserted with considerable confidence : 
 
 I. That the potential of all things terrestrial, 
 including man with all his powers, intellectual and 
 moral, the potential of our very selves, for instance, 
 in this assembly, was originally contained in the 
 atoms of one of those nebulous patches of light. 
 
122 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 thousands of which are brought within the ken of 
 the modern telescope. How this potential got 
 there is not stated. 
 
 2. That the present state of things has been 
 brought about, not by the subsequent intervention 
 of any supreme cause or governor of all things, 
 but through the natural interaction of these atoms 
 or atomic forces. Combinations and recombina- 
 tions throughout unnumbered ages have ensued, 
 and the fittest have survived. Of living organisms 
 the powers have descended by inheritance, have 
 then been modified by their environments, and 
 again the fittest have survived. This, succinctly, 
 is said to be the origin of man by evolution. 
 
 3. It is asserted that throughout Nature there 
 are no certain tokens of design ; wonderful adap- 
 tations are by no means denied, but they are 
 referred to the influence of successive environ- 
 ments and Natural Selection. 
 
 4. This philosophy asserts that if there be an 
 intelligent Author of Nature, an Absolute 
 Supreme, He is to us unknowable. 
 
 Such, so far as I understand it, are said to be 
 the legitimate philosophical conclusions of the 
 most complete and refined science of the day. 
 
 If this be the ultimate result of the latest 
 combinations of the atoms, and if this be all, then, 
 so far as man is concerned, this ultimate result is 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 123 
 
 human life without an adequate motive, affections 
 with no object sufficient to fill them, hopes of im- 
 mortality never to be realised, aspirations after 
 God and godliness never to be attained : thus 
 myriads of myriads of other nebulae may still be 
 the potentials of delusion, and their outcomes the 
 kingdom of despair. 
 
 Now, I am old-fashioned enough not to accept 
 any of these postulates of the new philosophy in 
 their entirety ; there seems to be just a sufficient 
 substratum of truth in each of them to render 
 them specious, and to some minds attractive ; but 
 in their entirety I am unable to accept them ; not 
 because I am a Christian, but because I am a 
 student of Nature. I know of no more illustrious 
 names in the annals of science than those of 
 Newton, Herschel, and Faraday (I make no men- 
 tion, as I could, of the names of the living), and 
 their faith in an intelligent Author and Governor 
 of all things is a matter of history. Mere 
 authority, I well know, neither has nor ought to 
 have any ultimate weight in the deductions of 
 science ; nevertheless, the mention of these great 
 names seems the readiest mode of reassuring 
 an assembly such as this, of reassuring them from 
 the very first, after the enunciation of postulates 
 which could not fail to shock the ears and sadden 
 the hearts of Christian men. 
 
124 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 As to the evolution of man, not so much from 
 a zoophyte or a monkey, as rather through 
 zoophytes from the interaction of the atomic forces 
 in a nebula ; if such can be shown to be the order of 
 Nature, that is to say, if such has been and is the 
 will of Him who ordered Nature, I bow, and have 
 no objection to make. For " an intelligent Author 
 of Nature being supposed, it makes no alteration 
 in the matter before us ivkether He acts iji Nature 
 every moment, or at once contrived and executed 
 his own part in the plan of the world." These are 
 the words of Bishop Butler, and he goes still 
 further and adds in words of a burning signifi- 
 cance, " If civil magistrates could make the sa^ictions 
 of their laws execute themselves, ive should be just 
 in the same sense tmder their government then as 
 zue are noiv ; but in a much higher degree and more 
 perfect manner.'^ 
 
 If creation by evolution were a very strongly 
 presumable fact, I should logically accept it. 
 With my own hands a quarter of a century ago I 
 obtained, and any chemist might have obtained, 
 all the elements which I found in an ^gg and in 
 grains of wheat, out of a piece of granite and from 
 the air which surrounded it, element for element. 
 It has been one of the most astonishing and un- 
 expected results of modern science that we can 
 unmistakably trace these very elements also in 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 125 
 
 the stars, and partly also in the nebulas ; perhaps 
 all of them when our instruments are improved. 
 But no chemist, with all his wonderful art, has 
 ever yet witnessed the evolution of a living thing 
 from these lifeless molecules of matter and force. 
 
 From what I know, through my own speciality, 
 both from geometry and experiment, of the 
 structure of lenses and the human eye, I do not 
 believe that any amount of evolution, extending 
 through any amount of time consistent with the 
 requirements of our astronomical ^ knowledge, 
 could have issued in the production of that most 
 beautiful and complicated instrument the human 
 eye. There are too many curved surfaces, too 
 many distances, too many densities of the media, 
 each essential to the other, too great a facility of 
 ruin by slight disarrangement, to admit of any- 
 thing short of the intervention of an intelligent 
 Will at some stage of the evolutionary process.- 
 
 The most perfect, and at the same time the 
 
 ^ On this subject I trust I may be permitted to refer to Note A 
 appended to my Hulsean Lectures for 1867 (Deighton, Bell, and 
 Co.) See also p. 138, note. 
 
 2 It makes no difference to the force of this argument whether 
 the intervention of the Will took place at the creation of the atoms 
 or at a subsequent stage. The former hypothesis, viz. that of an 
 original self-adaptive power impressed upon the molecules 
 (assemblages of atoms) at the time of their creation, only enhances 
 the power and wisdom of the Creator. This is in the spirit of 
 Butler's observation, already quoted, relative to the execution of laws 
 by the77iselves. The "manufactured articles" of Sir John Herschel 
 would, on this hypothesis, be more highly manufactured still. 
 
126 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 most difficult optical contrivance known, is the 
 powerful achromatic object-glass of a microscope : 
 its structure is the long unhoped-for result of 
 the ingenuity of many powerful minds ; yet in 
 complexity and in perfection it falls infinitely 
 below the structure of the eye. Disarrange any 
 one of the curvatures of the many surfaces, or dis- 
 tances, or densities of the latter ; or worse, dis- 
 arrange its incomprehensible self-adaptive power, 
 the like of which is possessed by the handiwork 
 of nothing human, and all the opticians in the 
 world could not tell you what is the correlative 
 alteration necessary to repair it, and still less, to im- 
 prove it as natural selection is presumed to imply.^ 
 But I do not rest my objections to the theory 
 of the universal prevalence of creation by natural 
 selection without some intervention of an external 
 intelligent Will, solely on any special knowledge of 
 the structure of the human eye. Above and 
 beyond all other similar arguments, and there are 
 many such, Mr. Wallace, who has an equal claim 
 with Mr. Darwin to the origination of the theory 
 
 1 Dr. Helmholtz advances an argument on the other side. I 
 quote it only to show some results of the new Philosophy. He 
 says : " Now it is not too much to say that if an optician wanted to sell 
 me an instrument which had all these defects [of the human eye], 
 I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in 
 the strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument." (!) I can 
 only express astonishment, entire dissent, and the deepest regret at 
 the language. 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 127 
 
 of evolution, Mr. Wallace has made an express 
 exception in the case of man. For the creation 
 of man as he is, he postulates the necessity of the 
 intervention of an external Will, and I commend 
 his essay to your special attention. Among other 
 arguments he observes that the lowest types of 
 savages are in possession of a brain and of capaci- 
 ties far beyond any use to which they can apply 
 them in their present condition, and therefore they 
 could not ^ have been evolved from the mere neces- 
 sities of their environm.ents. Prolepsis, anticipation, 
 I may add, involves intention and a will. For my 
 own part, I would carry Mr. Wallace's remark upon 
 savages much further, and apply it to ourselves. 
 We, too, possess powers and capacities im- 
 measurably beyond the necessities of any merely 
 transitory life. There stir within us yearnings 
 irrepressible, longings unutterable, a curiosity 
 unsatisfied and insatiable by aught we see. These 
 
 ^ An able University colleague and Professor somewhat objects 
 to this argument, because the power of anticipation might have 
 been originally impressed upon the molecules. This is conceivable, 
 and, if really the case, would be a still more wonderful instance 
 of a more highly wrought manufacture of the atoms. But the 
 contention of Mr. Darwin's Theory of Evolution seems to be, that 
 the alteration or development of an organism is brought about 
 solely by the environment, and is up to the extent only of the 
 demands of the environment itself and at the time : in other words, 
 the Forces of Natural Selection are not anticipative. In the 
 beginning ot Nature this theory supposes no '■'pre-established 
 harmony y See Mr. Wallace's Contributions to the Theory of Nfattiral 
 Selection (Macmillan, 1870). 
 
128 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 appetites, passions, and affections come to us, not 
 as Socrates and Plato ^ supposed, nor as our own 
 great poet sings, from the dim recollection of some 
 former state of our being,'-^ still less from the 
 delusive inheritance of our progenitors ; they are 
 the indications of something within us, akin to 
 something immeasurably beyond us, tokens of 
 something attainable yet not hitherto attained ; 
 signs of a potential fellowship with spirits nobler 
 and more glorious than our own ; they are the 
 title-deeds of our presumptive heirship to some 
 brighter world than any that has yet been formed 
 among the starry spangles of the skies. 
 
 " Whether we be young or old, 
 Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
 Is with infinity, and only there ; 
 With hope it is, hope that can never die, 
 Effort, and expectation and desire. 
 And something evermore about to be." 
 
 But our knowledge of these atomic forces, so 
 far as it at present extends, does not leave us in 
 serious doubt as to their origin ; for there is a very 
 strong presumptive evidence drawn from the 
 
 1 See Plato's Me7io. 
 
 2 See Wordsworth's ode on Intimations of Mortality, stanza 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar." 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 129 
 
 results of the most modern scientific investigation 
 that they are neither eternal nor the products of 
 evolution. No philosopher of recent times was 
 better acquainted than Sir J. Herschel with the 
 interior mechanism of Nature. From his contem- 
 plation of the remarkably constant, definite, and 
 restricted, yet various and powerful interactions of 
 these elementary molecules, he was forced to the 
 conviction that they possessed " all the character- 
 istics of manufactured articles^ The expression is 
 memorable, accurate, and graphic ; it may become 
 one of the everlasting possessions of mankind. 
 Professor Maxwell, a man whose mind has been 
 trained by the mental discipline of the same noble 
 university, arrives at the same conclusion ; but as 
 his knowledge has exceeded that of Herschel on this 
 point, so he goes further in the same direction of 
 thought. " No theory of evolution," he says, " can be 
 formed to account for the similarity of the molecules 
 throughout all time, and throughout the whole 
 region of the stellar universe, for evolution neces- 
 sarily implies continuous change, and the molecule 
 is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or 
 destruction." — " None of the processes of Nature, 
 since the time when Nature began, have produced 
 the slightest difference in the properties of any 
 molecule. On the other hand, the exact equality 
 of each molecule to all others of the same kind 
 
 K 
 
130 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 precludes the idea of its being eternal and self- 
 existent We have reached the utmost limit of 
 our thinking faculties when we have admitted that 
 because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent 
 it must have been created." " These molecules," he 
 adds, " continue this day as they were created, 
 perfect in number, and measure, and weight, and 
 from the ineffaceable characters impressed on 
 them we may learn that those aspirations after 
 truth in statement and justice in action, which we 
 reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are 
 ours because they are the essential constituents 
 of the image of Him who in the beginning 
 created not only the heaven and the earth, but the 
 materials of which heaven and earth consist." 
 And this, my friends, this is the true outcome of 
 the deepest, the most exact, and the most recent 
 science of our age. A grander utterance has not 
 come from the mind of a philosopher since the 
 days when Newton concluded his Principia by his 
 immortal scJwlhnn on the majestic personality of 
 the Creator and Lord of the universe. 
 
 I now come to the question of design in Nature. 
 Our new philosophy admits that throughout Nature 
 there are found innumerable instances of wonderful 
 adaptations ; but it asserts that these adaptations 
 are the necessary, the inevitable results of the new 
 environments, the mere fact of the permanent 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 131 
 
 survival of a modified organism being in itself a 
 clear intimation that it is the fittest modification 
 that has survived, and that some new and effective 
 adaptation has been established. It is not stated 
 whence came the singular capacities of the mole- 
 cules for assuming their new arrangements ; nor 
 is it explained how it comes about, that the per- 
 manent survivals follow (on the whole) the direc- 
 tion of improvement. But it is stated that Mr. 
 Darwin, whose mind is said to have been *' the 
 most deeply stored with the choicest materials of 
 the teleologist, rejects teleology, seeking to refer 
 these wonders to natural causes." This is high au- 
 thority, though in science, as I have said, authority 
 weighs but little. On the other hand, I know for 
 certain that so strong were the convictions of Sir 
 John Herschel in the very contrary direction, that 
 one of his last acts, very shortly before his removal 
 from among us, was to busy himself about a MS. col- 
 lection of all the passages in his own writings where 
 he had referred to the tokens of an intelligent Will 
 in Nature.^ We have also heard the testimony of the 
 greatest molecular physicist now living among us. 
 If, then, the question of design were to be settled by 
 the weight of philosophical authority, the Christian 
 has nothing to fear. But in questions such as this, 
 
 1 One of the most striking of these, quotations from Sir John 
 Herschel's writings, will be found as a motto on page 144, Essay V. 
 
132 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 wherein, and from whatever causes, the philoso- 
 phers are said to differ, I should prefer to appeal 
 to the common and average sense of mankind. 
 
 I know of no greater intellectual treat — I 
 might even call it moral — than to take Mr. 
 Darwin's most charming work on the Fertilisation 
 of Orchids, and his equally charming and acute 
 monograph on the Lythrums, and repeat, as I 
 have repeated, many of the experiments and 
 observations therein detailed. The effect on my 
 mind was an irresistible impulse to uncover and 
 bow my head, as being in the immediate presence 
 of the wonderful prescience and benevolent con- 
 trivance of the Universal Father. And I think 
 such, also, would be the result on the convictions 
 and the emotions of the vast majority of average^ 
 men. I think their verdict would be, that no 
 plainer marks of a contriving Will exist in a steam- 
 engine, or a printing-press, or a telescope — I am 
 not speaking of the whole end, scope, and intention 
 of that Divine Will, I am only speaking of the 
 marks of its existence ; the rest we know not yet 
 
 1 A few years ago a celebrated cause was tried at Edinburgh ; 
 the question being whether a certain mineral was coal or not coal. 
 Several of the ablest geologists and microscopists of the day were 
 called on both sides. The one set deposed that the mineral was not 
 coal at all ; the other, that it was coal of the very best description. 
 The perplexed judge was compelled to throw aside all the scientific 
 evidence and to rely on the judgment of an average workman of in- 
 telligence. Of course the mineral was coal. 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 133 
 
 Or again, recurring to our ultimate molecules. 
 The great modern advance of human knowledge, 
 and especially the wonderful applications of this 
 knowledge to the purposes of the arts of life, 
 have arisen very much from the existence of iron, 
 and coal, and sulphur, and platina, and silica upon 
 our planet. Now tell me, what were the anterior 
 chances, prior to the existence of Nature, that 
 when a being like man came, after the lapse 
 of ages, upon our earth, he would have found 
 stored up for him, and for his development in the 
 scale of being, iron, and coal, and sulphur, and 
 platina, and silica? To tell me that the co- 
 existence of all these essentially independent 
 existences might be the result of anything 
 short of the intention of a prescient Will, the 
 evidences of a '' pre-establisJied . Jiaj'inony'' would 
 be equivalent to telling me that, after placing 
 sufficient letters of the alphabet into a box, there 
 might be dredged out of it the dialogues of 
 Plato, the dramas of Shakespeare, and the Prin- 
 cipia of Newton. 
 
 But now comes the inevitable question, which 
 all along may have been perplexing your minds, 
 as I confess it once greatly perplexed my own. 
 How is it that men, endowed with nearly equal 
 capacities, and possessing nearly equal opportuni- 
 ties, should draw such different, not to say such 
 
134 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 opposite, conclusions on subjects which in import- 
 ance transcend all others, and beyond all others 
 tax the reason to the utmost, and touch the 
 emotions to the quick ? 
 
 I think that one cause of this contrariety of 
 conviction lies in the nature of the evidences for 
 Christianity, in the natural evidences for the being 
 of a Supreme, and for the Immortality of the Soul. 
 These evidences, from the very nature of the case, 
 cannot be mathematical, or demonstrative, or 
 scientific ; they belong rather to that class of 
 evidence which we call probable ; to that class, be 
 it observed, upon which alone we determine the 
 conduct of our lives ; for, " to us probability is 
 the guide of life." And although these probable 
 evidences range greatly in degree, and although 
 not any one of them, taken alone and by itself, 
 may be sufficient to command entire consent and 
 enforce an absolute conviction, nevertheless, when 
 taken altogether, they may — they often do — by 
 their consilience from many different and indepen- 
 dent sources, furnish the mind with the highest 
 moral certainty of which it is capable. This we 
 claim to be especially the case with Christianity ; 
 and in arguing the case, this consilience ought 
 never to be forgotten, for it is by laying too great 
 stress upon one or two of these presumptive 
 evidences alone, and especially in conversation, 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 135 
 
 or in the rapid reading of a literary article, that 
 many a mind has been robbed of its peace. " For 
 it is easy to show," says Bishop Butler,-^ " in a 
 short and lively manner that such and such things 
 are liable to objection, that this and another thing 
 is of little weight in itself ; but impossible to show 
 in like manner {i.e. in a short and lively manner) 
 the united force of the whole argument in one 
 view." 
 
 Now it is especially in this region of probable 
 evidence that the bias of the will comes in to warp 
 the judgment. The bias of early education, the 
 still greater bias of a later discipline of the in- 
 tellectual and moral faculties, the bias of the 
 environment and of party spirit, the bias, we are 
 told, even of a strong or of a morbid mood.^ 
 Thus, by the excessive or exclusive cultivation of 
 any one side of our complex nature, intellect- 
 ual or ethical, the mind becomes one -handled 
 — lop-sided. This is the inevitable Nemesis of 
 Dispropoi'tion. 
 
 In like manner, the exclusive or excessive 
 addiction to mathematical studies has a tendency 
 to render the mind averse to, or distrustful of, 
 arguments which are not demonstrative ; excessive 
 addiction to physiology may superinduce an undue 
 
 ^ Analogy^ ch. vii. part ii. 
 
 2 Tyndall's Preface to his Address to the British Association, 
 1874. 
 
136 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 reliance on the effects of the " rhythmic vibrations 
 of the brain," or on unquestionably mechanical 
 actions of the nervous system ; experimental phil- 
 osophy suggests the arguments of measure and 
 weight, and has been found to match vaccination 
 against prayer. On the other hand, the theo- 
 logian is very liable to a strong bias in favour of 
 authority, and to circumscribe his views to the 
 conditions of a world not yet realised. All these 
 tendencies,unless consciously and carefully watched, 
 do, and of necessity must, warp the judgment, and 
 render it more or less incapable of a just and im- 
 partial decision. This or that line of probable evi- 
 dence, when presented to its consideration, is unduly 
 cast aside ; the threads of the evidence are rudely 
 snapped one after the other, and the consilient 
 network of the whole argument is overlooked. 
 
 It is in the modern tendency to specialism of 
 pursuit that the greatest danger is to be feared in 
 regard to the philosophical arguments against 
 Christianity ; for the evidences of Christianity are 
 not special, but varied and co-extensive with the 
 whole nature of man and his environments. 
 Hence it would be well for the philosopher to take 
 into the laboratory of his intellect such old- 
 fashioned authors as Butler and Paley and Cole- 
 ridge,^ and honestly test in his personal experience 
 
 ^ There is in my opinion no book in our language on the 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 137 
 
 the faith which he begins to doubt, before he finally 
 rejects it. Better still would it be if, in the study 
 of every manse throughout England, there were 
 found a well-used microscope, and on the lawn a 
 tolerable telescope ; and best of all, if those who 
 possess influence in our national universities could 
 see their way to the enforcement of a small modi- 
 cum of the practical knowledge of common things 
 on the minds of those who are to go forth and do 
 battle with the ignorance and the failings of our 
 population, and to spread light throughout the land. 
 A little knowledge of the four ancient elements, 
 fire, air, earth, and water, would save many a young 
 clergyman from the vanity of ridiculous extremes, 
 and from the surprise of the more wisely and 
 widely educated among his flock. For, depend 
 upon it, whatever may be our suspicions or our 
 fears, the pursuit of the knowledge of the works 
 of Nature will increase, and increase with an 
 accelerated velocity ; and if our clergy decline to 
 keep pace with it, and to direct it into wholesome 
 channels, they and their flocks will be overtaken, 
 
 fundamentals of the Christian Faith better suited to a patient and 
 thoughtful mind than Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. The late 
 venerated Bishop Sumner, at one time, used to recommend Aphor- 
 ism xix, on Redemption, to the notice of his candidates for Ordina- 
 tion. With reference to Christianity, Coleridge says: "Try it. 
 It has been eighteen hundred years in existence : and has one indi- 
 vidual, in whose words you could place full confidence, left a record 
 like the following ?— I tried it, and it did not answer. . . . "— 
 Aphorism vii. 
 
138 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 though from opposite directions, by what I have 
 ventured to call the inevitable Nemesis of Dispro- 
 portion. 
 
 I, for one, believe, not so much in the right as 
 in the duty of every man to make the best of the 
 faculties wherewith his Maker has entrusted him ; 
 and I meet with a grateful and a hopeful thought 
 all those unexpected accessions to our knowledge 
 of God in Nature which in recent times have come 
 to us in almost overwhelming abundance. There 
 is no need to be frightened at the phantoms raised 
 by such terms as matter, and force, and molecules, 
 and protoplasmic energy, and rhythmic vibrations 
 of the brain ; there are no real terrors in a phil- 
 osophy which affirms the conceivability that two 
 and two might possibly make five, or in that 
 which predicates that an infinite number of straight 
 lines constitute a finite surface, or in that which 
 denies all evidence of design in Nature, or in that 
 which assimilates the motives which induce a 
 parent to support his offspring, to the pleasures 
 derived from wine and music, or in that which 
 boldly asserts the unknowableness of the Supreme 
 and the vanity of prayer. Surely philosophies 
 which involve such results can have no per- 
 manent grasp on human nature : they are in 
 themselves suicidal,^ and in their turn, and after 
 
 1 Mr. Mivart's word is '■^ interiiecine'' ; Dr. M. Arnold's is 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 139 
 
 their brief day, will, like other such philosophies, 
 be refuted or denied by the next comer, and 
 are doomed to accomplish the happy des- 
 patch. 
 
 Meanwhile we have the means of at least par- 
 tially summarising the results of modern discovery 
 on the interpretation of the revelation of God's 
 Will contained in the Sacred Scriptures. The dis- 
 coveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler taught 
 the Christian Church that the language of the 
 Bible was to be understood in the ordinary sense 
 of the ordinary language of men, and was not to 
 be strained into an adamantine literalness. The 
 subsequent discoveries of geology have carried a 
 similar lesson still further, and we may safely con- 
 clude that in the earlier chapters of Genesis the 
 great Father of Mankind is teaching His children 
 as children, and only up to the measure of their 
 capacities and their needs at and about the time 
 of the Revelation. At the same time, we find that 
 He has endowed them with powers and capacities, 
 
 ^''dismal.'''' See Cojitempora^y Review, October 1874, pp. 776 and 
 818. With reference to the unlimited time demanded by the Theory 
 of Evolution, it may be remarked, that if the resultant of the forces 
 of evolution acting continually but accidentally on an organism, be 
 expressed as a definite integral, with the time from the creation as 
 independent variable, and the superior limit 1874 a.d., is it not 
 conceivable that the result should, as is the case with many such 
 integrals, be either nothing or a small quantity ? This seems to me 
 to be worth consideration, as a possible source of the fallacy in the 
 unlimited application of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. 
 
140 MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 each and all of which they are bound to develop, 
 and thereby to learn more and more of His will in 
 Nature. Lastly, the course of scientific discovery 
 has led to the certainty that the universe at large, 
 our own physical frames, and our mental and 
 moral constitution, are arranged on a much more 
 mechanical principle than had hitherto been con- 
 ceived. The Christian student and the philo- 
 sophical divine will be wise to expect a still further 
 development of knowledge in the same direction. 
 On the other side, we have at length been brought, 
 by philosophical conclusions, from the most ad- 
 vanced scientific knowledge of the day to the 
 philosophical certainty that matter is not eternal, 
 but that from the beginning of Nature it was 
 endued with very wonderful properties by some 
 Intelligent Will. This is the latest and the 
 grandest Revelation of Nature. Here we may 
 safely stop. 
 
 For my own part, a lifetime passed in the pur- 
 suit and the communication of natural knowledge, 
 so far from effacing or obscuring the faith in which 
 I was brought up, has served to deepen and to 
 render more intelligent the conviction that the 
 sacred Scriptures, properly interpreted, are to us 
 the Word of God ; that the great Father of all 
 has rendered himself knowable to mankind by 
 the manifestation of Christ, and that in this know- 
 
AND NATURAL RELIGION 141 
 
 ledge consists their highest life ; that He has re- 
 deemed them by the atonement of His Son, and 
 illuminates and strengthens all who come to Him 
 by His Spirit. 
 
V 
 
 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION 
 TO MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 
 
 An Address read by request before the Church Congress at 
 Swansea in 1879. 
 
"There is, in the present age, a certain fearlessness with regard 
 to what may be under the government of God, which nothing but 
 an universally acknowledged demonstration on the side of Atheism 
 can justify : and which makes it necessary that men be made to 
 feel that there is no sort of ground for being thus presumptuous, 
 even on the most sceptical principles." — Butler, Atialogy, ch. ii. 
 pt. i. 
 
 " Will without motive, power without design, thought opposed 
 to reason, would be admirable in explaining a chaos, but would 
 render little aid in accounting for anything else." — Sir J. Herschel. 
 
ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION 
 TO MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE. 
 
 A FEW weeks ago it was my lot to meet an old 
 friend who for many years had been lost sight of 
 Our conversation soon turned to the subject which 
 is so often uppermost in the minds of thoughtful 
 men, viz. as to how it had fared with him in these 
 days of religious conflict. He had been much 
 troubled, he said, by those endless contrarieties of 
 religious belief, and doubt, and dogma, which on 
 this side and on that he had heard propounded. 
 Knowing how brief our conference must necessarily 
 be, I at once addressed myself to what I regarded 
 as the pith and the root of the matter, and I sug- 
 gested that, apart from the statements in the New 
 Testament, there could be no permanent and solid 
 ground for the hopes and consolations and 
 religious convictions of the Christian. As for the 
 interpretation thereof, I added, the Gospels and the 
 Epistles were originally addressed to plain men, 
 endowed with ordinary capacities, and engaged in 
 
 L 
 
146 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 ordinary avocations, and in the interpretation of 
 the sacred documents they were, and we are, re- 
 sponsible to the Giver for the proper use of the 
 gifts we have received. True, said he, but there 
 seem to be grave difficulties anterior to and 
 underlying the narratives in the Sacred Scriptures. 
 Here I paused for a moment, and he added, I 
 refer for instance to the alleged impossibility of 
 Miracles, and to the many arrangements in 
 Nature which appear to militate against the power 
 or the benevolence of its Author. I rejoined, you 
 are now opening a wide question, and one 
 that cannot be effectually discussed where we 
 stand. Your train awaits you, and I have only 
 time to say that these subjects have naturally 
 exercised my own mind also for many years, and 
 the result is that I, for one, entertain as strong a 
 conviction of the substantial veracity of the Gospel 
 Histories as I do of the Newtonian theory of 
 Gravitation ; and I am not more staggered at the 
 wonderful things recorded in the Life of Christ, 
 than I am at what I read in the skies themselves 
 of the constitution and the motions of the stars. 
 I know not what may have been the effect of 
 these eirea TrrepoevTa, these winged words, upon 
 my friend's mind, but they at once suggested to me 
 the matter and the form of my x^ddress to your- 
 selves to-day. Possibly I may thereby afford to 
 
MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 147 
 
 some of my brethren who are battling with the 
 doubts and errors so rife in the world new phases 
 of thought ; and these new and helpful thoughts 
 they may, in their turn, bring to bear on the 
 intellectual and moral trials of others who may 
 consult them in their spiritual needs ; and thus 
 the fruits of the seed now cast upon the waters 
 may be reaped after many days : who can tell ? 
 
 Si quid ego adjuvero curamve levasso 
 Ecquid erit pretii ! 
 
 I shall ask you then, in this behalf and in the first 
 instance, to consider with me The Vastness of 
 Nature : a vastness both with regard to variety 
 and to extent : to our finite conceptions a vast- 
 ness illimitable, infinite. And the reason why I 
 invite you to the consideration of this phase of 
 Nature lies in the conviction that it will remove 
 from some minds, as it certainly has from my own, 
 all a priori or anterior objections to the Miracles 
 of the New Testament, drawn from the suspicion 
 that they are contrary to the Laws of Nature. I 
 think I shall be able to convince you that, what- 
 ever else these Miracles may be, we have no valid 
 reason for regarding them in this light, that is, 
 either as Contradictions or even as Suspensions ; 
 on the contrary, they may, after all, be only neces- 
 sary instances of the orderly course of Nature itself ; 
 Nature, I mean, regarded as a Wpiole. This 
 
148 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 branch of the subject being dismissed, I propose to 
 consider certain other parts of Nature in their 
 Prophetic or Anticipative Aspects: thereby vin- 
 dicating, I think, the parental or providential 
 character of many natural dispositions of things in 
 the midst of which we have our being. 
 
 Turn your thoughts then, for a few moments, 
 to the Starry Heavens, as nightly disclosed to the 
 Astronomer's gaze by those gigantic telescopes 
 and their appliances, which are among the chief 
 wonders of modern inventive skill. In certain 
 portions of the heavens more stars pass each 
 minute across the small visible field of the instru- 
 ment than you or I have ever distinctly seen, with 
 unaided vision, shining over the whole concave 
 surface of the sky ; I say nothing of the incal- 
 culable distances of each from each, or of each 
 from our Earth.^ Yet modern research has taught 
 us, as you know, that each of these innumerable 
 lights is a sun, similar in its constitution to our 
 own ; nay, often a combination of two companion 
 suns, each revolving round each other, and each 
 revolving, beyond all question, after the order of 
 the same Keplerian laws which regulate our own. 
 Moreover, there can be no doubt that close to 
 
 1 Mr. Roberts has recently (1888) photographed more than 30,000 
 stars on one small plate less than four square inches, placed in the 
 focus of his telescope. Ptolemy at Alexandria did not count more 
 than 1200 in the whole sky, with the naked eye. 
 
MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 149 
 
 each of these companion suns there revolves a 
 system of planetary worlds, nestling within the 
 protective influence of the dominant attraction. 
 Further still, and what interests us most, is the 
 fact that our planetary system and our own 
 sun are themselves mere units in this vast asso- 
 ciated group of revolving orbs. Yet this incalcul- 
 able array of associated systems of worlds is not a 
 Chaos but a Kosmos : a Kosmos replete with 
 order, and beauty, and law. The sublimity of 
 its beauty is familiar to us all; and labour and 
 ingenuity have gradually disclosed some portions 
 of its orderly arrangements. Strange to say, it is 
 owing to these orderly arrangements, and to them 
 alone, that we are enabled to guide our ships in 
 safety across the ocean ; by these alone we lay 
 and we recover our Atlantic cables, we map out 
 our continents, we measure our globe with match- 
 less accuracy, and we regulate the calendar of our 
 seasons. But as for the whole scope, the final 
 intention of this illimitable scheme, the why and 
 the whither of this stupendous prodigality of 
 creation, we are utterly and hopelessly ignorant. 
 The Christian, indeed, will say that these bright 
 innumerable existences read to him a sublime 
 lesson as to what He, the Author of this tran- 
 scendent magnificence, must be, who nevertheless 
 condescends to call Himself his Father, and sheds 
 
I50 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 abroad within the Christian's spirit the joy un- 
 speakable and the ineffable dignity of the filial 
 relation. But let that pass. 
 
 And now, not in contrast, still less not in 
 derisive contrast, turn your thoughts to that little 
 sand-glass which necessarily limits, and may be 
 paralyses, the due accomplishment of my present 
 task. The sand therein you know is the debris of 
 ancient continents, existing ages upon ages ago 
 upon this our globe, and teeming with life and 
 happiness and beauty long anterior to the advent 
 of man. The why and the whither of this 
 amazing prodigality of duration as much baffle 
 and evade us as do the number of the stars. And 
 next think of the two distinct materials which in 
 the main constitute the glass, that curious en- 
 velope which contains the sand. Of one of these 
 materials every particle, strange to say, ages and 
 ages ago passed through the organic tissues of 
 microscopic creatures, and then became elabor- 
 ated as flint for the ultimate service of man : 
 elaborated by living creatures enjoying no doubt 
 a pleasurable existence in those ancient waters. 
 Nor is this all, for the other material of the glass 
 formed an essential element in the life and growth 
 of the beautiful flora which adorned the primeval 
 shores. But as to the ultimate why and the final 
 whither of all this sublime machinery, this vast 
 
MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 151 
 
 prodigality of resource, this interminable variety of 
 Nature, they astonish, baffle, and evade us. 
 But it is not so much the sand, or the glass con- 
 taining it, to which I desire to draw your attention ; 
 but it is rather to something else within the glass, 
 viz. the atmospheric gaseous substances, which, 
 though invisible to our eyes, are to my mind far 
 more marvellous, and in one sense far more 
 stupendous, than all the incalculable numbers and 
 the subtle arrangements observable in the starry 
 heavens. For modern science has revealed to us 
 the existence, within that glass, of myriads of 
 myriads of myriads of gaseous entities — the mind 
 becomes stupefied in reckoning up their numbers — 
 which, moving amongst each other with veloci- 
 ties measurable by no terrestrial standards, but 
 approaching rather the velocities of the planets, 
 and dashing against each other and against the 
 sides of the glass, produce, by their orderly con- 
 flicts, all those varied effects which we classify 
 under the names of atmospheric pressure, heat, and 
 light, and electricity ! Moreover, each one of these 
 innumerable atoms has its own distinctive and 
 characteristic weight, infinitesimal though it be. 
 Each, from all primeval time, has been endued 
 with its own unalterable individuality, its definite 
 likes and dislikes, and its own associative energies. 
 Such is the wondrous constitution, revealed to us 
 
152 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 by the ingenious diligence of modern research, 
 of the aeriform substances constituting the at- 
 mosphere within that glass : the atmosphere, in 
 fact, in which we breathe. The mind becomes 
 half-humiliated and half-paralysed at the con- 
 templation, and even that most accomplished 
 mathematician, my colleague from the sister uni- 
 versity, who will soon address you, must find his 
 powers sorely exercised in the disentanglement of 
 these complicated flights and collisions of these 
 atoms. 
 
 But now add to those stupendous hosts which 
 adorn the skies, and to these myriad atoms thus 
 curiously endowed — add, I say, all the existences 
 that lie between and around them ; add to them 
 that bright mysterious thing called Life, and 
 specially human life ; Man, with all his godlike 
 endowments of the understanding ; Man, with all 
 his appetites, passions, and affections, and " all that 
 stirs this mortal frame " ; — and then, summing up 
 the whole, what have you arrived at, at last, in all 
 this interminable array of things and thoughts? 
 Simply this : you have Nature ; Nature, which 
 is only another name for the sum of all created 
 things ; all that exist, or have existed, or ever 
 will exist. You have indeed a Scheme, a System, 
 a Constitution of things, in which, though the 
 several parts manifestly cohere and interact with 
 
MIR A CLES AND PRO VIDENCE 1 5 3 
 
 an astonishing connection, nevertheless it is a 
 Scheme in which " it is impossible for us to give 
 the whole account of even any one single thing 
 whatever;" "the whole account, that is, of all its 
 causes, ends, and necessary adjuncts — adjuncts, I 
 mean, without which it could not have been." 
 
 We speak indeed of the LAWS OF NATURE : 
 but very essential it is that we analyse the meaning 
 of the terms. We find that certain circumstances, 
 certain collocations of matter, for instance, or of the 
 planets, recur again and again, and then we find 
 that certain other consequences invariably ensue, 
 and so far as such and similar collocations of matter 
 are concerned, we rightly conclude that we have 
 at length discovered the plan, the law, the natural 
 scheme, after which this matter, or those planets, 
 or those collocations or environments, are so far 
 constituted. And this we call a Law of Nature : 
 a law expressing so far, and so far only, the Will, 
 the scheme, of the Author of Nature. But of how 
 few instances of things, and of how infinitesimal a 
 part of Nature have we discovered such laws. 
 You may count them on the fingers of your 
 hands. There are the Laws of Motion, for 
 instance. Some of these we do know, for 
 Galileo and Newton discovered them and taught 
 them. And Joule, in more recent times, taught 
 us the convertibility of motion into other forms of 
 
154 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 energy. And Young and Fresnel taught us a 
 little of the nature and laws of Light. And 
 Faraday gave us some notion of the mode of 
 action of Electricity. And Herschel pierced 
 through a rift or two of the veil which interposes 
 between us and the starry vault. But you have 
 now traversed the realms of certainty and of 
 known Natural Law ; and as for the rest of 
 things, the Law {i.e. the Scheme of tJie things) is 
 displaced by presumptive evidence, and probability 
 alone becomes the guide of Life. 
 
 " Now, in this darkness, or this light, of Nature, 
 call it which you will," tell me, if it pleased the 
 Author of Nature to send to us His children a 
 revelation of things in which we are most deeply 
 concerned, but regarding which the visible parts 
 of Nature could give us no information ; if in this 
 behalf there appeared upon this earth one who 
 assumed to be a messenger from heaven, and to 
 know the secrets of the Most High ; if he claimed 
 for himself a divine original, and exhibited in his 
 conduct moral excellences and a moral intelligence 
 far beyond any that we conceive attainable by the 
 children of men ; if he taught and lived as none 
 other being ever taught and lived before or since ; 
 and if in the course of his ministry this Unique 
 Being, appearing under this unique environment, 
 claimed and was said and seen to exhibit power 
 
MIR A CLES AND FRO VIDENCE 1 5 5 
 
 over the diseases of the body and over the ele- 
 ments of Nature, nay, over life and death ; could 
 you, I ask, tindej' these tmique circumstances^ and 
 considering what the scheme of Nature has been 
 shown to be, viz. to us illimitable and unknown ; 
 could you, with any show of reason, reject the 
 narrative, simply under the plea that it was con- 
 trary to the Lazvs of Nature ? 
 
 It is not, then, any known contrariety to the 
 laws of material Nature which, to our finite appre- 
 hensions, affects the a priori credibility of miracles. 
 On the contrary, the question regarding miracles 
 is relegated to the credibility of human testimony. 
 The true question is, Did the alleged occurrences 
 really occur ? And the case is even stronger than 
 this, when referred to Nature in her immaterial 
 phase. For the wonderful works of the Unique 
 Being are attributed to the force of His Word, and 
 the energy of His Will : and who knows anything 
 of the relations of the Will of such a Being to the 
 motions of material atoms ? Thus the question 
 is again removed to the credibility of the witnesses 
 — and there it lies outside the scope of the present 
 argument. 
 
 Such then is an outline — (our time and the 
 occasion admit no more) — such, I say, is a mere 
 rapid sketch of the grounds on which I regard the 
 Miracles of Christ as removed from all questions 
 
156 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 regarding the Laws of Nature with which we have 
 acquaintance. The occasions on which these 
 wonders took place were utterly unique in the 
 world's history. The great Being who performed 
 them was unique among the children of men, and 
 the objects and His Mission were unique : what 
 wonder then if the works of His life were equally 
 unique ? In a word, the whole environment 
 belongs to a part of Nature hitherto undisclosed, 
 and the Laws which govern it were at the time, 
 and still are, unknown. Under this aspect what- 
 ever occurred might be, or must be, essentially 
 miraculous, part, that is, of the general Scheme of 
 Nature, but nevertheless a part of it hitherto not 
 by us experienced. 
 
 Finally, add to the consideration of the mere 
 presence of this unique Being and of His Mission 
 among us, add the consideration of the power of 
 His Will. The power of the human will, nay, 
 the power of all animal will, is as great as it is 
 mysterious. By it we every moment introduce a 
 force, a natural force, which overcomes gravitation 
 in the motion of our limbs : we control the wills 
 and the actions of other men ; we " overcome 
 kingdoms." The Christ of the Gospels said that 
 His Will was the Will of Him that sent Him. 
 Are there any limits to the power of that Will, 
 other than the limits of Beneficence and Wisdom ? 
 
MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 157 
 
 What wonder then that at a word of His, the 
 word that expressed His Will, other and to us 
 strange forces come into action, and so " the 
 blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the 
 lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are 
 raised up, and the poor have the glad tidings 
 preached to them." 
 
 I proceed reluctantly to the last topic of my 
 address to you to-day. And even this I am 
 constrained to dismiss with a brevity and a sen- 
 tentiousness which must fall far short of the thing 
 I aim at. I refer to the Prophetic or Anticipative 
 Character of certain arrangements in the course of 
 Nature. In my mind they give rise to an admira- 
 tion and an astonishment inferior only to those 
 produced by the contemplation of the Miracles 
 of Christ. 
 
 Consider then, for a moment, in what are con- 
 stituted, and by what means are developed, the 
 arts, the conveniences, the embellishments of social 
 life. What, for instance, would this English 
 life of ours be, in the absence of coal, and clay, 
 and iron, and glass. Even the absence of sulphur, 
 — God forbid that I should here be thinking of 
 miserable, though necessary war, — but the absence 
 of even sulphur, as a material element in sulphuric 
 acid, would make an absolute revolution in the 
 useful and pleasant varieties of our daily existence. 
 
158 ASPECTS OF NATURE IN RELATION TO 
 
 Regard also for a moment railways, and telegraphs, 
 and telescopes, and spectroscopes, in the mere 
 light, though that is an important light, of their 
 exciting the curiosity and developing the intel- 
 ligence of the great masses of our population. Go 
 back in thought to the distant times of our lake- 
 dwellers, and to those still more ancient cheerless 
 men whose chief mechanical implements consisted 
 of wedges of flint, and then let me ask you what 
 is the source from whence we derive those materials 
 which have been, and, as I contend, must have been, 
 fore-ordained to be a chief means of our advance- 
 ment in the arts of life, and of the discipline of our 
 intellectual powers. We know that it is from the 
 dark recesses of the solid earth alone that, with 
 curious, obstinate industry, we dig and delve those 
 crude materials which, in the course of their skilful 
 manipulation, tax and inform and strengthen the 
 inventive faculties ; and, in their subsequent appli- 
 ance to the conveniences of life, develop and en- 
 hance the social relations and the active charities 
 of daily existence. Thus the earth, by the bounty 
 of her providence, becomes to us the fruitful parent 
 of a double Jpon. And now that you have before 
 your minds this wondrous correlation of the consti- 
 tuents of our complex globe to the still more wonder- 
 ful being in due time to be placed upon it, so that he 
 may subdue it to the purposes of his own moral and 
 
MIRACLES AND PROVIDENCE 159 
 
 intellectual elevation — to the purposes, I say, of 
 his gradual development upwards and onwards 
 towards the Supreme ; I say, holding this wondrous 
 correlation of human capacities with material things 
 clear and full before the vision of your minds, 
 turn the gaze of your thoughts towards the 
 nebulous masses in the far-off sky, now in process 
 of condensation, of evolution if you will, into new 
 suns and new worlds, to be constituted in their 
 turn after the fashion of our own. In these 
 mysterious fiery clouds the instructed gaze of 
 science already discerns the nitrogen of future 
 atmospheres, the hydrogen of future oceans, the 
 carbon of a future vegetation, and, it may be, the 
 sure traces of the iron that is destined to quicken 
 the inventive genius of beings who are to be the 
 denizens of worlds yet unformed. Magnificent 
 prolepsis ! The skies of the ages long past must 
 in like manner have once proclaimed the ultimate 
 advent of the same beneficent arrangements in 
 preparation for ourselves. For those ancient skies 
 contained the " promise and the potency," the far- 
 off prophecy of the advent of beings who, in the 
 slow but secure progress of the rolling ages, would 
 sing of the glory, and be warmed and invigorated 
 by the parental love of the Lord of the universe. 
 
VI 
 
 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE 
 
 PROGRESS OF THE KNOWLEDGE 
 
 OF NATURE 
 
 An Address read to the Church Congress at Dublin 
 
 M 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 In the biography of the poet Thomas Moore 
 there is the record of a conversation between 
 himself and the philosopher Schlegel, in which 
 the latter puts the following question : " If a man 
 conscientiously and without any intentional levity 
 were to publish a book in England expressive of 
 his disbelief in the Scriptures, and giving the 
 reasons of his disbelief, how would such a book 
 be received ? " To this question the poet replied, 
 " As to the book, I don't know ; but I know how 
 the man would be received, and I should not like 
 to be in his place." And this is probably a fair 
 representation of English public opinion among 
 the educated classes of the last generation. But 
 how changed is the sentiment of the present hour. 
 I believe that I betray no secret, but am referring 
 rather to a notorious fact, in the establishment of 
 a society of gentlemen, counting among its 
 members high dignitaries in the English and 
 
1 64 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 Roman churches, and others equal to them in 
 rank and influence and moral worth, who periodic- 
 ally sit side by side with the most prominent 
 and advanced sceptical writers of the day ; 
 calmly, and without anger, or the expression of 
 surprise, discussing questions which a very few 
 years ago would have been regarded as dangerous 
 to public morals, if not socially disreputable. No 
 doubt these philosophic, and for the most part 
 highly cultured gentlemen are anxious to hear the 
 best and the worst that can be said of the 
 foundations of their respective faiths : and, in such 
 respects, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. But 
 the fact of the association still remains ; and what 
 is of far more importance, the question still remains 
 as to the origin and the significance of this unex- 
 ampled mutual tolerance of antagonistic opinions on 
 matters which affect the closest and dearest of human 
 hopes, and the strongest motives of human actions. 
 Moreover, we ourselves are all of us cognisant 
 of another fact, parallel to the former and of 
 cognate significance, whatever that significance may 
 be. The periodical literature of the day bristles 
 with discussions and attacks on our orthodox 
 creeds, which a few years ago would have been 
 resented as inconsistent with the secure existence 
 of society ; nevertheless this literature lies in pro- 
 fusion on the tables of our clubs and drawing- 
 
 I 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 165 
 
 rooms, accessible alike to old and young, to the sons 
 and daughters of our families, and to the visitors 
 within our houses, unrebuked and unrestrained. 
 
 What then does this remarkable revulsion in 
 the public sentiment imply or portend ? Is it 
 symptomatic of a widely diffused and growing in- 
 difference ? Is it significant of ignorance as to the 
 serious bearings of the points at issue ? Does it 
 originate in curiosity, or is it a happy consequence 
 of the innate love of Englishmen for fair play ? 
 Is it in any degree the Nemesis on some ex- 
 travagance of dogmatic assertion in the theology 
 of years that are gone by — the Nemesis, that is, 
 of exaggeration and disproportion ? Or, lastly, is 
 this discussion and unwonted tolerance of an- 
 tagonistic opinions a fashion of the day, ephemeral 
 and unreasoning ? 
 
 Musing, though not without anxiety, as most 
 thoughtful men are wont to muse, on this 
 anomalous state of the public sentiment, two 
 observations not alien to the subject before us 
 have occurred to my mind, which in my hearing 
 fell from the lips of that eminently honest and 
 most accomplished philosopher, the late Sir John 
 Herschel. " What a strange thing," said he, " is 
 public opinion in England : it will put up almost 
 anything : and if it finds in the long run that it 
 won't do, it will quietly pjU it downr On another 
 
1 66 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 occasion, when this gifted man was observed to be 
 in a state of considerable mental disquietude (it 
 was in the earlier days of table-turning), upon 
 being asked what it was that troubled him, he 
 replied, " Well ! to think that, after all that has 
 been done and written on the subject, men have 
 so little faith in the laws of motion ! " 
 
 Now, I for one am inclined to think that 
 Society, public opinion, has for the moment " put 
 up " Scepticism : that is to say, dropping the 
 thin veil of the euphemistic disguise, it has "put 
 up " a new form of practical Atheism, making its 
 advocates fashionable, and setting them in high 
 places ; but it may be that, so soon as it is felt 
 that the questions at issue are not confined to 
 protoplasm, and the nebular hypothesis, and 
 natural selection ; so soon as it is clearly seen 
 that these questions touch the deepest and most 
 fondly cherished emotions of the human heart, 
 and actuate the springs and motives of practical 
 life — then I think that Society, public opinion, 
 will put down this moral dynamite, and remove 
 this dangerous explosive from the neighbour- 
 hood of our families ; but not, alas ! before many 
 a fine mind has been involved in darkness and 
 desolation. Christianity is not yet annihilated. 
 
 And, in no remote analogy with the other 
 remark of the same philosopher, I also believe 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 167 
 
 that SO soon as Society, so soon as any individual 
 member thereof, becomes truly cognisant of the 
 laws of the Kingdom of God and of his Christ ; so 
 soon as he becomes personally and in his heart 
 imbued with the Christian faith, and versed ex- 
 perimentally in the dynamics of the Christian life 
 — he will, by sure and happy intuition, by 
 spiritual insight, at once reject the ideological 
 table-turning of the new philosophies. For you\ 
 cannot by such philosophies, you cannot by anyi 
 amount of materialistic palmistry, obliterate the ; 
 life -long experience of a man's affections, and \ 
 persuade him that the peace, the love, the joy, the 
 moral strength that have possessed him, and have 
 ripened into act, are the mere collocations of 
 molecules and evolutions of his own consciousness. 
 If he knows anything, he knows that from within 
 they have actuated his outer life, impelling 
 it towards all that is reputed best and noblest 
 among men, with a power far beyond any that he 
 could call naturally his own. You cannot 
 obstupefy such a man by the jugglery of a 
 mathematical puzzle, telling him that all know- 
 ledge is uncertain, and that no man can be sure 
 that, under some conditions, two and two may 
 not be five. To such an one, thus endued with a 
 spiritual insight, thus panoplied in the faith of the 
 world to come, you may as well offer a stone or a 
 
i68 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 piece of chalk in return for the bread of his inner 
 life as try to persuade him (and here I quote from 
 the written oracles of the new religion) — as try to 
 persuade him " that the noblest and most human 
 emotion is worship (for the most part of the silent 
 sort) at the altar of the Unknown and Un- 
 knowable ! " Such a man will hardly stop to 
 unravel the enigma of these strange words ; they 
 will rather roll back his thoughts for two thousand 
 years, and they will recall to him the vision of an 
 aged man walking along the streets of Athens, 
 hard by an historic altar nigh to the Areopagus ; 
 and in spirit he will thence follow the grand 
 apostle to the dungeon and sword of Nero ; in spirit 
 hearing and in his own experience responding 
 to the words " I know, I knoiv whom I have trusted, 
 and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that 
 which I have committed to His keeping." 
 
 Further, the two terms which most accurately 
 describe very much of — I was going to call it the 
 new philosophies, but in fact they are but a 
 recJiauffe of the old — these two terms, I say, viz. 
 Atheism and Scepticism, are just the very terms 
 which the authors and advocates of the new-old 
 philosophies are most careful to reject or to 
 explain away. As to Atheism, probably few or 
 none of us have ever met with a man who avozved 
 himself an atheist. Non-theism or Antitheism is 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 169 
 
 not SO unacceptable. I stop not now to ask the 
 source of the repugnance, or to analyse the generic 
 difference of the terms. 
 
 And as to the other term, Scepticism, it is 
 very instructive to observe the ingenuity of the 
 attempts to remove the social sting from the 
 word. The most recent suggestion is that the 
 true sceptics are those who reject the new-old 
 philosophy : theism, they tell us, is the true scep- 
 ticism : be it so : " things are what they are." 
 
 But what is still more remarkable is the new 
 dogma that the Sceptical Spirit is the one actual 
 source of all progress in knowledge. In a well- 
 known " lay sermon " (oh, shade of Coleridge for 
 the term !) I read that " Natural Knowledge," or as 
 it had perhaps better be called, Nature-Know- 
 ledge, " is in fact the only real knowledge " ; and 
 that every great advance in this natural know- 
 ledge has involved " the cherishing of the keenest 
 scepticism." Now I do most emphatically deny, 
 on ethical and historical grounds, that the progress 
 of mankind in any one branch of knowledge or of 
 morality, has been furthered by a sceptical spirit. I 
 affirm that all true knowledge of every kind has been 
 born of FAITH, and has been nurtured by patience 
 and hope. Scepticism is not the joyful mother of 
 children : she is barren. Restlessness is her step- 
 mother, hopelessness and misery dwell in her abode. 
 
170 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 It was not in scepticism, but in faith, that 
 Galileo persevered till he wrested from Nature her 
 secret of the Laws of Motion. It was not in 
 scepticism, but in faith, that Kepler toiled and 
 failed, failed and toiled, till he discovered the laws 
 which he felt assured the Lord and Governor of the 
 universe had impressed on the orbits of the planets. 
 
 Not in scepticism, but in faith, the elder Her- 
 schel hour after hour walked his weary but 
 observant rounds, fed by a sister's hands, and 
 stopping not till he had finished his mirrors, not 
 doubting they would in due time unfold to him 
 the construction of the material heavens. And in 
 a like spirit of a loving confidence his gifted son 
 banished himself to the far South, till he had 
 finished the work which his father had begun, and 
 for all ages wrote " ccbHs exploratis " upon the 
 escutcheon of their fame. 
 
 Not in scepticism, but in a spirit of faith, 
 Dalton and Davy and Faraday laid the founda- 
 tions of that astonishing advance in the domain of 
 physics which we inherit in the arts, the con- 
 veniences, the embellishments, the intelligence of 
 our daily lives. 
 
 But that which most astonishes me in this bold 
 assertion of VICTORY THROUGH DoUBT is that it 
 was made while the example of the saintly Faraday 
 was still within living memory. No man con- 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 171 
 
 tributed more than he to the advance of human 
 knowledge, but Faraday worked on, not because he 
 doubted, but because his mind was full of the ardour 
 of faith. Faith that Nature was established in 
 Law ; faith specially in Him who gave the Law. 
 And I know few episodes in the annals of science 
 more touching than what was communicated to me 
 by a deacon in the Church of simple-minded Chris- 
 tianity, to whom Faraday ministered the truths of 
 Christ, according to the light in which he had 
 learned to apprehend them. It was in Dundee, to- 
 wards the close of his life, when his overtaxed 
 brain and his memory began to fail him, he 
 opened the Bible, and began his address to the 
 poor and simple Christians to whom he was a 
 deacon ; but he soon stopped, and in tones the 
 memory of which still linger for good on the ears 
 of some of us, he begged his audience to forgive 
 him if his quotations from the Scriptures were 
 sometimes not exact. " My friends," said he, " you 
 know it w^as not always so," and, my informant 
 added, his face shone as an angel's. 
 
 The sum of the whole matter is this : the great 
 Father of the universe has ordained that in Nature, 
 as in Grace, the victory of the children of light shall 
 be, not by keen scepticism, but by a loving Faith. 
 
 If, however, for the words '* keen scepticism," as 
 the one source of the advancement of all know- 
 
172 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 ledge, we could write "fair trial," or "honest 
 experiment," or "personal research," then these 
 philosophies and the New Testament would, so 
 far, be at one. " Seek and ye shall find," is as 
 applicable to the operations of Nature as it is to 
 the promises of Grace. Nay, further, we affirm 
 that the true prevailing cause of the rejection of 
 the faith of Christ is that it has 7iot been 
 personally tried. It is like the rejection of 
 gravitation by a mind refusing to submit to 
 mathematical culture. Those burning and eternal 
 words, " Come unto me," challenge a trial at the 
 hands of all the weary ones, all the restless ones, 
 all the bereaved ones in this troublesome though 
 beautiful world. The light that shines from 
 Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet claims for its 
 prerogative that it will illuminate all the dark 
 passages, and mitigate if not remove all the dreary 
 perplexities of this mortal life. Nay, more than 
 that, it promises to supply a motive and an 
 inner strength leading to the development of the 
 human spirit into its perfection, and to satisfy 
 its illimitable aspirations. 
 
 But the failing sand warns me to conclude ; and 
 it shall be with another episode in that practical 
 life which is referred to in the subject title of my 
 address. 
 
 It has come to my knowledge and to that of 
 
SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 173 
 
 Others, that, not very long ago, a preacher in the 
 course of his office was addressing the members of 
 an ancient university on that security of Know- 
 ledge of the Divine Grace which comes from the 
 experience of a life -long trial. It is said that 
 the preacher himself desponded — not wisely 
 perhaps — of the result on the minds of the 
 cultured audience to whom it was his duty to 
 appeal. But in the course of the evening there 
 was put into his hand a letter couched in the 
 following terms : " A Manchester man, steeped to 
 the neck in cotton, from sheer curiosity strayed 
 this afternoon into St. Mary's church. He was in 
 great mental distress at the time, and all things 
 seemed to him as a blank, but he there heard 
 words of comfort which he takes as a voice from 
 the Heavenly Father, and they will remain in his 
 memory as a strength to the end of his life." 
 The " keenest scepticism " will not restore a man 
 to his better self, who is steeped in cotton, or 
 despondency, or sin. 
 
 L'Envoi. 
 
 Religious men are apt to lay very much of 
 the Atheism of the present day to the charge 
 of scientific men. It may conduce to a more 
 accurate apprehension of the fact, whatever the 
 value of the fact may be, if it be understood that 
 
174 SCEPTICISM AND FAITH 
 
 not one among the scientific professors at either 
 of our two ancient universities has written or 
 taught antagonistically to the Christian Faith. 
 And I believe the same assertion may be 
 made in relation to their eminent colleagues in 
 Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 But the truth is, the exact sciences do not so 
 much as even toiicJi on the question of the immor- 
 tality of the soul, or on the existence of an Author 
 and Governor of Nature. The true questions at 
 issue are ethical and historical, not dynamical. For 
 between the human will, the Ego, and the mol- 
 ecular dynamics of the brain a dark gulf of total 
 ignorance is fixed, which not a ray from the light of 
 science has ever traversed. In one sense, indeed, 
 the question and the evidence are experimental ; 
 but the experiments cannot be made in the 
 laboratory or in the dissecting-room : they lie 
 amidst the hopes, the passions, the affections 
 of the soul. Did Christ rise from the dead ? 
 Is the Gospel of the Apostle John substanti- 
 ally true ? These and such as these are the 
 vital questions. For nearly two thousand years 
 that which has been best and noblest in the 
 intellect of mankind has responded, " Yes " ; 
 and that which has been wisest and loveliest 
 in its heart has confirmed and maintained the 
 response. 
 
VII 
 
 THE SLOWNESS OF THE CREATIVE 
 PROGRESS 
 
 Discourse forming the first of a Course of Hulsean Lectures, 
 delivered before the University of Cambridge in 1866 
 
THE SLOWNESS OF THE CREATIVE 
 PROCESS 
 
 Isaiah xi. 9 ; 2 Peter hi. 8. 
 "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for 
 
 the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 
 waters cover the sea." 
 "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is 
 
 with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as 
 
 one day." 
 
 Throughout the long roll of many centuries 
 the thoughts contained in this promise of the 
 prophet, and in this caution of the apostle, have 
 animated the hopes or sustained the patience 
 of God's true children in all their sad variety of 
 pain. The promise that the seed of the woman 
 should bruise the serpent's head ushered in the 
 first dispensation of God's grace to man. Its 
 reiteration in the last words of the Lord Jesus 
 to His redeemed, "Behold, I come quickly," 
 closes the Canon of the Holy Books. It was 
 the hope that the Messiah of their covenant 
 
 N 
 
178 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 God should come to restore the land and the 
 government to Israel, which alone dried the 
 tears of those who had sat down to weep by 
 the waters of Babylon, hanging their harps upon 
 the trees that were therein. It was substantially 
 the light of the same hope, in another and a 
 brighter form, which alone illuminated the dreary 
 catacombs serving at once for the tomb and the 
 sanctuary, and, by God's providence, for the cradle 
 of the early Church struggling in her agony. 
 And once more, in times nearer to our own, it 
 was the settled conviction that Christ their king 
 would, in His own good time, come to them in 
 royal form, claiming and avenging His own, which 
 nerved the Waldenses to suppress their moans, 
 and to look with undaunted eye upon their 
 slaughtered saints, 
 
 " Slain by the bloody Piedmontese who roll'd 
 Mother with infant down the rocks." 
 By this hope then the Church of God, in all ages, 
 has been, and is now, saved, and that not alone in 
 her fiercer trials and rarer emergencies, but it is 
 the unclouded confidence that Christ the king 
 shall one day reign in righteousness and peace 
 which shines as the one light within the Christian's 
 dwelling, amidst bereavement or anguish or poverty 
 or oppression or the canker of earthly hopes ; or 
 in serener times is cherished as a lamp to the 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 179 
 
 Christian's feet and a lantern to his path, guiding 
 and cheering him in the noiseless tenor of a holy 
 life. I may add, it is the hope of this second 
 Advent of Christ which is commemorated through- 
 out Christendom this very day. 
 
 Meanwhile, where is the promise of His coming? 
 For since the Fathers fell asleep all things continue 
 as they were from the beginning of the creation. 
 This was the insidious taunt which assailed the 
 faith and tried the constancy of the early Church. 
 They could count among their members not many 
 wise men after the flesh. For the most part they 
 had accepted the truth as it is in Jesus, not so 
 much through the force of argument as through 
 the persuasion of the logic of the affections and 
 the yearnings of spiritual need ; hence for them 
 the best, if not the only shield against these fiery 
 darts of the evil one was the sacred experience of 
 the regenerate heart, the witness of the Divine 
 Spirit testifying to their spirits that they were the 
 sons of God : it was impossible to doubt that He 
 who had said to them, " I will come to you again," 
 was a faithful Saviour, and they could hardly 
 forget His words, " in patience possess ye your 
 souls." 
 
 But if this hope deferred was a sore trial to 
 the Christians of old, how has the force of that 
 trial become redoubled to ourselves after the lapse 
 
i8o THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 of 1800 years! For the fact cannot be evaded 
 (and I have no desire to evade the fact) that the 
 Lord of the Church still " delayeth His coming." 
 It cannot be denied that the Religion of the Cross, 
 that truest and highest " knowledge of the Lord," 
 so far from " covering the earth," as yet extends 
 not even in a nominal form over a fifth part of its 
 population ; and the familiar records of every day 
 force upon us the unwelcome conviction that of 
 no part of Christendom can it be said with truth, 
 they neither " hurt nor destroy in God's holy moun- 
 tain." In addition to this severe but necessary 
 trial of the militant Church there is now super- 
 added this gratuitous exaggeration of her trouble, 
 that men who pass for the philosophers of the 
 day would fain persuade us that the true reason 
 of the slow progress, or, as they would invidiously 
 term it, the failure of Christianity, lies in the fact 
 that the religion of Christ, like other systems, has 
 had its little day, has run its natural course, and 
 in its turn, like other systems, is become 
 obsolete. If this thought has any sting in it for 
 ourselves, the smart perhaps may come from 
 the consciousness of our own personal share in 
 the hindrance to the progress of the Faith of 
 Christ. But this is not all. There are those 
 who sit in the seat of the interpreters of Nature 
 who loudly assert, not alone that all things have 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS iSi 
 
 continued ever as they were of old, but that by 
 the force of inevitable law, all that appertains to 
 the world of matter, and to the world of intellect, 
 and to the world of emotion, 
 
 " whatever stirs this mortal frame," 
 must have continued, and must continue, as it 
 was since the beginning of the creation. These 
 bold interpreters of Nature, it would be unbe- 
 coming to use a stronger term, would fain have 
 us believe that they have extracted from their 
 mistress her choicest secret; and the secret is, 
 that she everywhere raises her voice in protest 
 against miracles, and ever has been, and must 
 ever be, inexorable to the pleadings of human 
 prayer. 
 
 If these allegations of the opponents of 
 Christianity were indeed true, then I need 
 scarcely say, of all men, we Christians must be 
 most pitiable. But what is the reply to these 
 calumnies of our faith, drawn, as they are said 
 to be, from this alleged monotonous uniformity, 
 this inflexible constancy of nature ? The replies, 
 I conceive, are twofold in their bearing. To one 
 of them I have already referred, and it is one 
 which requires no learning save the learning of 
 the heart to understand or to supply. It is true 
 that no one can fully appreciate its force who has 
 not found, or has not desired to find, " the secret 
 
1 82 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 of the Lord," be he the learned or be he the 
 unlettered man. That reply was expressed in 
 two short words by one of the ablest and most 
 thoughtful philosophers who have lived in the 
 respect and the affections of Englishmen in 
 modern times. Speaking of the truth of the 
 Christian faith as demonstrated by its formal 
 evidences, Coleridge said with an emphasis which 
 will sink the deeper the more it is considered : 
 " Do not talk to me of the Evidences of Christi- 
 anity ; Try it." And there is many a simple 
 
 man and many a gifted man among us who could 
 say, I have tried this faith, this effete, this obsolete 
 faith, as some would presume to call it, and I 
 have found that it fills me with peace ; peace 
 with the known which surrounds me, peace with 
 the great unknown Father who is above and 
 beyond me ; it refreshes me with hope, it animates 
 me with love, it endues me with inner strength to 
 eschew the evil and to choose the good. " I 
 know in whom I have believed, and am 
 persuaded that He is able to keep that which 
 I have committed unto Him, until that day." 
 This is one reply which satisfies the man's 
 individual self. 
 
 But for us — for us who are surrounded by all 
 the appliances of learning, and furnished with the 
 fruitful results of ancient and modern thought ; 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 183 
 
 for US whose calling of God it is to go forth 
 to the great outer world, clothed not alone in 
 a panoply for ourselves, but who, having kindled 
 our torch within the shrine of truth, are responsible 
 for the sharing and the diffusion of its light to 
 those who, sitting in darkness and the shadows 
 of doubt, cry out, " Come over and help us " — 
 what, I ask, are such as we to say to such as 
 these ? I answer, we may say at once and 
 in general, slowness of progress is no sign of 
 failure ; on the contrary, slowness of progress 
 in all that is enduring, is the great Law of the 
 Universe. The creature is impatient, the Creator 
 is deliberate. The creature, whose sum of earthly 
 life is bounded by the threescore years and ten, 
 hurries to and fro in the restlessness of his will ; 
 the Creator, sitting in quietude upon His eternal 
 throne, upholdeth all things in the majestic 
 leisureness of unbounded power. With Him " a 
 thousand years are as one day." I think I shall 
 be able to convince you that it is to overlooking 
 this law of slow and deliberate action in the 
 Divine government of Nature, that wc may trace 
 no slight part of the mental distress which 
 harasses many thoughtful men at the present 
 day. For this reason I propose this continuity 
 of the law of slowness of progress, pervading the 
 physical, the mental, and the moral universe — I 
 
1 84 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 propose the analogies of this prevalent leisureness 
 of the Divine action, so far as we are able to trace 
 it and understand it, as the staple and the main 
 argument of at least two of the Lectures which I 
 am to deliver from this pulpit. It is to this that 
 I shall shortly return. 
 
 And next, as to the undisturbed constancy, 
 the monotonous uniformity of Nature, which at 
 every stage of its progress is said by some writers 
 to protest against the intrusion of miracle, and to 
 render illogical the interposition of prayer ; — 
 when I think of the scheme of Nature, so far 
 as it is comprehended by us in this 19th century, 
 my mind at once reverts to the grand, majestic, 
 ceaseless march of the sun, with all that host 
 of material systems which he holds together 
 under the influence of his power. To us men, 
 measuring, as we must measure, by our earthly 
 cycles and by our tiny units of space, this 
 stately march of the solar universe seems uniform 
 in its rate, and definite in the point towards which 
 it tends. But surely this uniformity of rate and 
 this straight definite line of progress are only 
 apparent, and arise solely from the incalculable 
 sweep of the cosmical curve in which this universe 
 moves, and from mere terrestrial time, as yet too 
 brief to observe a deflection. Wait with the 
 patience of God, and this vast universe will 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 185 
 
 have visited other regions of the infinitude of 
 space ; new and it may be inconceivable circum- 
 stances will have intervened, new combinations 
 of other forces will have been introduced, and 
 the rate and the line of the stately progress will 
 all be changed. And as it is impossible to 
 indicate at what point of its cosmical orbit this 
 universe may not enter into new circumstances 
 and be subject to new forces, thus giving rise 
 to hitherto unknown resultants — to Miracles, if 
 you please to assign to them that name — so it 
 seems illogical to say that the occurrence of such 
 results during any particular era of the world's 
 existence is inconceivable. So this earth and all 
 that is on it and surrounds it, this Nature, as we 
 call it, is after all changeful in its constancy, and 
 various in its uniformity. Constant and uniform 
 alone in this, that it is under the care of God, 
 with whom alone is " no variableness neither 
 shadow of turning." 
 
 And surely this steady, various march of the 
 vast material Cosmos can hardly fail to be a type 
 of the moral universe circling around the centre of 
 infinite perfection in some marvellous orbit which 
 is ever approaching and approaching the throne of 
 God, yet never nigh. 
 
 With thoughts like these possessing our minds 
 we are now prepared for the consideration of the 
 
1 86 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 main subject on which I desire to engage your 
 attention, viz. continuity of slowness of progress as 
 a law of created things. I think that walking by 
 the light of human knowledge — a knowledge which 
 we ought never to forget has come to us through 
 God's blessing on His own great gift of genius 
 wherewith He has inspired favoured men, loyal to 
 the responsibility of their calling — I say, walking 
 by the light of science we shall find, /;/ the first 
 place, many indications of deliberate slowness of 
 progress in the successive stages of the creation of 
 the earth, ultimately fitting it with a marvellous 
 and a loving foresight for the abode of Man. 
 And, in tJie second place, after Man has appeared 
 upon this elaborate earth, Man with all his latent 
 vast capacity, I am sure we shall trace a similar 
 slowness of progress in the development of his 
 intellectual powers, and in his acquisition and 
 storing up of human knowledge ; and surely this 
 knowledge is a creation also — the creation of the 
 mind. 
 
 And I would then ask, if we shall have suc- 
 ceeded in tracing slowness of progress as a 
 primordial law, which the great Creator has im- 
 posed upon Himself both in the material and in 
 the intellectual parts of His creation, would you 
 not, in the third place, expect to find a similar 
 slowness of progress in the moral development of 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 187 
 
 man, in the restoration, in the building up his 
 moral being into the image of God ? would you 
 not in fact expect to find a slowness of progress in 
 the acceptance of Christianity in the hearts and 
 minds of God's redeemed, if a revelation told you, 
 as it assuredly does tell you, that the religion of 
 Christ is the only means of perfecting their moral 
 nature in the sight of a Holy Creator ? 
 
 Or, putting this argument into another form, 
 if we find, as we do find, this progress of the 
 Christian faith slow, it may be even mysteriously 
 slow, shall we not say that this is in analogy, in 
 continuity, with those other arrangements for the 
 progress of the material creation, and for the 
 development of man's intellectual being, both of 
 which we admit originate with God ? 
 
 Now this is the main argument which I shall 
 propose for your consideration : no doubt it will 
 have a few ramifications, and I may be compelled 
 to deduce from it a corollary or two not perhaps 
 wholly expected from the premises on which the 
 argument itself is founded. I think, for instance, 
 it will be found to throw some light upon the 
 interpretation which ought to be put upon certain 
 portions of the divine revelation contained in the 
 Holy Scriptures, not merely because the in- 
 terpretation may be found rational and consistent, 
 but because it is become necessary. And if the 
 
i88 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 mode of interpretation I allude to be true, then I 
 think it will remove from some minds a load 
 which has long oppressed them, as certainly it has 
 removed it from my own. 
 
 Moreover, as we proceed with this argument, 
 we shall now and then find occasion to pause for 
 a moment from the observation of the law of 
 continuity in slowness of progress, to trace the 
 marks of exquisite beauty which never fail to 
 accompany the growth of the things created, and 
 to observe also the Joy of Life, in the midst ot 
 which, and by means of which, these creations 
 themselves proceed. 
 
 My friends, if this stately slowness amidst 
 beauty and life and joy be a law of Nature, one 
 effect of such considerations upon any heart pre- 
 pared and attuned by the Spirit of God must be 
 that, even in the midst of the noise and tumult 
 and hurry of the comings and goings in the world, 
 that heart will once more hear the voice of Christ 
 the Saviour, " Come ye aside with me into a 
 quiet place, and rest awhile." Even so. Lord, 
 abide with us. 
 
 I. And now, for the purposes of illustrating 
 our argument, I must ask you for a moment to 
 summon forth that divine creative faculty where- 
 with God has lovingly endued us for the clearer 
 apprehension of his manifold works. In imagina- 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 189 
 
 tlon I must ask you to ascend with me some old 
 Silurian hill on the primeval earth, ages upon 
 ages before God had fitted it for the abode of 
 man. Picture to yourselves some mighty stream 
 like the Ganges or the Amazon rolling its waters 
 from far distant mountains into an ancient sea. 
 You observe the broad interminable belt of forest 
 which, stretching inland further than the eye can 
 reach, rises in wild luxuriance from the swamps 
 which fringe the stream. You may trace there 
 the majestic pine, the graceful fern, the erect 
 gigantic moss, fluted and towering columnar reeds, 
 and a strange fantastic undergrowth, unknown to 
 the flora of the age of man. The oak and the 
 elm, the sycamore and the noble acacias of the 
 west, you will not find, for as yet they are not 
 created. There are no cattle grazing " upon a 
 thousand hills," for God as yet has not clothed 
 those hills with grass. In the thick jungle of 
 these primeval forests you will not hear " the 
 young lions roaring after their prey," for as yet 
 there is no meat provided for such by God. 
 Those forests are tuneless of the glad carols of 
 the birds, for as yet " the herb yielding seed, and 
 the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind " are not 
 created for their food. Apart from the low croak 
 of the reptile, and it may be the shrill chirp of 
 many an insect, there is the hush of the silence of 
 
190 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 non-existence amidst those matted fronds, save 
 when the voice of the Lord is heard in the thunder 
 or the wind. 
 
 And if in the strength of this creative gift you 
 still keep your stand upon your watch-place for 
 ages beyond your power to count, you will see 
 nothing but the decay and the renewal of that 
 interminable umbrageous belt The ferns will 
 fade, the gigantic moss and the columnar reed 
 will shrivel, and the pines will decay and fall to 
 their mother earth, but all this only to make way 
 for another and more luxuriant growth. And so 
 for ages. 
 
 At length the scene changes, and through 
 some mighty pulsation, some throb of the earth's 
 bosom, ordained of God, you see the waters of the 
 broad swampy margin deepen and deepen, and 
 then pile upon pile of forest growth and forest 
 decay are submerged and gone. But wait awhile 
 for the lapse of years : I know not how many, 
 for science as yet has found no unit for the 
 measure of cycles such as these. Whatever the 
 periods may be, the divine faculty within us 
 concentrates and apprehends them all as but a 
 whiff of vaporous time. Wait awhile, and then 
 upon the broad silted margin of the everlasting 
 stream piles upon piles of other forests again rise 
 and decay, and by slow successive pulsations of 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 191 
 
 the uncompleted earth in their turn disappear 
 beneath the swollen tide. 
 
 Now if in spirit you saw all this, and only 
 this, would you be able to decipher the mean- 
 ing of the riddle? Would you imagine, for in- 
 stance, that all this mysterious prodigality of decay 
 was a divine elaborate contrivance for the pro- 
 duction and storing of fuel for the service of 
 races of beings yet unborn ? As you witnessed 
 the successive growths and submergence of those 
 forests, could you foresee or conceive in what way 
 such an arrangement of things could one day 
 materially conduce to the development of the 
 genius of intelligent creatures who were destined 
 to be in remote futurity the last and chiefest 
 denizens of the earth ? And if some bright 
 messenger from the throne of God stood at your 
 side, and at the beginning of the vision had told 
 you how, in other forests of far different growth, 
 the fowls of heaven would one day " make their 
 nests, and sing among the branches " ; if he had 
 told you that cattle would graze upon a thousand 
 hills, and that " by the springs in the valleys the 
 wild asses should quench their thirst " ; if he had 
 told you that God would place upon the earth a 
 being clothed in the majestic image of His own 
 mind, to be the lord and master of created things; 
 then I think that at the first you would receive 
 
192 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 the revelation, though in wonder yet in thankful- 
 ness of spirit, and you would wait in the fulness 
 of hope for the accomplishment of the promise. 
 But if the vision proceeded through incalculable 
 time, and for ages you had seen nothing but what, 
 for want of better knowledge, seemed to you an 
 endless prodigality of waste, would you in your 
 impatience be tempted to say, Surely that bright 
 messenger of God spoke to me in parables, for I 
 see nothing, and for ages I have seen nothing, 
 but a constant inflexible uniformity of Nature : 
 as for the grass which he told me was to cover 
 the hills, and the thousands of cattle which 
 were to fill the plains, all such creations would 
 be inconceivable, miraculous interruptions of that 
 Nature which for thousands of centuries I have 
 observed unbroken in its course. And as for 
 the advent of that being who is to be the lord 
 of that new earth, " where now is the promise 
 of his coming, for since the beginning of the 
 creation all things continue as they were ? " 
 
 My friends, I have not been amusing you 
 with some fantastic creation of the brain, but I 
 have been reminding you of the mode of the divine 
 action during one stage of the Creation. And 
 there are many like it. Be it remembered that to 
 this knowledge of the Lord's ways we have attained 
 through the righteous and loyal use of the Lord's 
 
 I 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 193 
 
 gift. And one conclusion that we may draw from 
 that knowledge is this, that God's mode of action 
 in the material creation has been and is deliberate 
 and slow, majestic in the composure of its leisure- 
 ness. There is also another inference which I think 
 naturally flows from the argument before us ; it is 
 one full of hope and encouragement to man, and 
 with that I shall conclude. The inference is this ; 
 — as the material universe, so far as we see it, at 
 length came forth from the Creator perfect in 
 relation to its purposes, fraught with beauty and 
 " very good," so also we may expect the progress 
 of the immaterial^ the intellectual part of us, 
 though ordained to be equally deliberate and 
 equally slow, will go on and on, embracing in 
 intelligent perception one after another of the 
 wonderful works of God, improving and im- 
 proving, not alone in the clearness and amount 
 of its intelligence, but in the comprehensiveness 
 of its grasp and the grandeur of its capacity. 
 
 And in like manner, notwithstanding there is so 
 much to grieve and to disappoint in the sin, and 
 the misery, and the degradation, and the 
 perversion of God's gifts which we see around us ; 
 notwithstanding the acknowledged slowness of the 
 progress of Christianity ; nevertheless, what I am 
 permitted to see of the ultimately perfect results 
 of a slow and deliberate action in other parts of 
 
 O 
 
194 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 the Creation checks In me, and I hope in you, 
 all despondency for the fate of our holy religion ; 
 it removes all doubt that the Gospel of the 
 Cross of Christ, possibly by its own divine 
 native force, shall ultimately triumph ; and it 
 animates us with a confident hope that the Spirit 
 of Christ Jesus shall in the end subdue every 
 heart to Himself, and then " the earth shall be 
 filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 waters cover the sea." 
 
 While I have been speaking to you on these 
 
 great topics, my friends, it cannot but be that 
 
 the thoughts of many hearts have been revealed 
 
 to themselves. And are they not such as these ? 
 
 Wherefore this hurry of mine, and this feverish 
 
 haste for the result? Is this work I am about, 
 
 the work which my Father has given me to do ? 
 
 — then like all God's other works it is to be done 
 
 with constancy, with forethought, and with 
 
 deliberate patience. I will cast my bread upon 
 
 the waters, not looking for the harvest to-morrow 
 
 or the next day, but in the fulness of faith, 
 
 not doubting that I shall find it after many 
 
 days ! 
 
 And I think something of the same tenor 
 must have been passing among the thoughts of 
 those of you who now sit where I well remember 
 sitting a full generation of man ago. Judging 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 195 
 
 from my own heart and from my own recollection, 
 young men stand in need of an ever-present 
 heavenly help to check, sometimes impatience, 
 sometimes despondency, sometimes a proneness to 
 judge before the time. To-day we have been 
 considering the patience of God. In your finite 
 measure strive to walk after that rule. Commit 
 thy way unto Him, and He shall bring it to pass. 
 Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him ! If 
 there is one frame of mind stronger and happier 
 than another, it is tJie mind stayed on God I In 
 the great Saviour's name PRAY FOR THAT. 
 
 Condorcet's Prophecy 
 
 Towards the end of the last century there 
 lived an accomplished philosopher in a neighbouring 
 country, who in the highest posts of literary oflfice 
 had served it well, and had encouraged and 
 advanced the various branches of the learning of 
 the times. Those were the days of the public 
 denial of God, and hence upon the men of those 
 days there came the inevitable Nemesis of violence 
 and riot. The man of whom I speak was pro- 
 scribed, and fled into concealment. 
 
 In a solitary chamber, with one only friend to 
 
196 THE SLOWNESS OF THE 
 
 visit him, this remarkable man, after many months 
 of seclusion without access to a single book, sat 
 down to the task of writing the progress of the 
 human mind from the dawn of history ; that work 
 accomplished, he began to record his hopes and 
 conceptions of its future destiny. He was a man 
 of great practical experience, and endued with a 
 genius well tutored by adversity ; would that I 
 could say he accepted the Christian Faith even in 
 the mutilated form in which they who said they 
 had the keys of knowledge, presented it to his 
 mind. 
 
 Condorcet lived in this solitary chamber, thus 
 unilluminated by the Christian's hope, just long 
 enough to complete the outline of his great work, 
 and then he was compelled to fly, and to perish 
 with a miserable death in his flight. 
 
 " Deserted in his utmost need 
 By those his former bounty fed." 
 
 Now, what think you was the conclusion to 
 which this accomplished solitary man arrived 
 regarding the spread of goodness and knowledge 
 among mankind ? He concluded that an amount 
 of knowledge, and a force of genius, and a perfec- 
 tion of virtue, quite inconceivable to ourselves at 
 present, would one day in the far vista of time 
 certainly prevail throughout the nations of a 
 
CREATIVE PROCESS 197 
 
 densely-populated world. Change these words 
 into the " Knowledge of the Lord," and they 
 approximate to the prophecy of Isaiah. Did 
 Condorcet unconsciously see the shadows of the 
 angels' wings who are sent from the throne of 
 God for their accomplishment ? 
 
 Accomplished that prophecy must be, but not 
 by the means which the philosopher conceived. 
 " Not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit, 
 saith the Lord." So to this end the Divine Lord 
 of His Church sends to one man the gift of sug- 
 gestion, to another the gift of combination, by the 
 same Spirit ; to one man he sends the genius of 
 patient investigation, by the same Spirit ; to one 
 man is given the word of wisdom, to another 
 faith, to another prophecy, for the perfecting of 
 the saints, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 
 till we all come, in the unity of the faith and of 
 the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ. Then the Earth shall be full 
 OF the Knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 Waters cover the Sea. 
 
 " If by Thy decree 
 The consummation that will come by stealth, 
 Be yet far distant, let Thy Word prevail, 
 Oh ! let Thy Word prevail, to take away 
 The sting of human nature. Spread the law, 
 
198 THE SLOWNESS OF CREATION 
 
 As it is written in this Holy Book, 
 Throughout all lands ; let every nation hear 
 The high behest, and every heart obey. 
 
 Father of Good ; this prayer in bounty grant, 
 In mercy grant it, to the wretched sons. 
 Then, not till then, shall persecution cease, 
 And cruel wars expire. The way is marked, 
 The guide appointed, and the Ransom paid." 
 
 Wordsworth, Excursioji^ Bk. ix. 
 
VII 
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 An Address delivered to followers of Mr. Bradlaugh in Northampton 
 1882 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 In the following Address to the mechanics at Northampton, it will 
 be found that several of the topics introduced have been already 
 discussed in previous Essays. The peculiar circumstances of the 
 Northampton workmen seemed to me, at the time, to indicate the 
 selection which has been adopted. Thus the old picture is in a new 
 frame, and the reader, if so disposed, can pass it by. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The following Address, delivered at Northampton 
 in 1882, would not have been reprinted among 
 these Essays, had it not been for the peculiar 
 character of the audience, and the somewhat 
 remarkable circumstances which occurred during 
 the discussion which followed it. For, in point of 
 fact, the main thoughts which this Address con- 
 tains have already been expressed (and possibly 
 more than once) in the writings which have here 
 preceded it ; nevertheless the arrangement of these 
 thoughts is different, and the whole Address may 
 be regarded in the light of a general summary of 
 arguments relating to some of the more prominent 
 difficulties which are alleged to militate against 
 the acceptance of the Christian Faith. 
 
 A few years ago I was requested, in conjunc- 
 tion with one or two other clergymen, by the 
 Incumbent of St. Edmund's, Northampton, to 
 address an assembly of Mr. Bradlaugh's adherents 
 
202 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 in the parish church on certain topics which they 
 alleged stood in the way of their acceptance of 
 Christianity. The project seemed at first to be 
 beset with perils, and to offer but little prospect of 
 eventual good. But the perils in fact did not 
 present themselves, and I have been assured on the 
 highest authority that the permanent result has been 
 the addition of many worshippers who hitherto had 
 abstained from attending religious services. 
 
 The arrangements made for the delivery of 
 these lectures included an Address on the Sunday 
 afternoon, followed by a hymn. After this the 
 congregation again met in the large parish school- 
 room, at eight o'clock in the evening, when the 
 subject of the Lecture was to be discussed, and 
 replies given to such questions as arose in connec- 
 tion with the Address. In my own case I thought 
 it advisable to conciliate the goodwill of my 
 audience by the delivery of a Lecture on the 
 preceding Saturday evening ; the subject which I 
 selected was The Vast and the MintUe in Natui^e. 
 The starry vault and its denizens illustrated the 
 former ; while the conflicts of the atoms in a gas, and 
 the marvellous beauty of microscopic foraminifera 
 furnished the topics relating to the latter. The 
 whole was designed as an introduction to the 
 general Address, and is alluded to therein. 
 
 The projected discussion in the schoolroom 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 203 
 
 on the Sunday evening had presented to my 
 mind considerable apprehensions ; but so far from 
 any contretemps arising, it passed off with the 
 expression of goodwill towards myself For a 
 time the questions referred, strange to say, to ex- 
 pressions in the Athanasian Creed ; I presume that 
 Unitarians, rather than adherents of Mr. Bradlaugh, 
 abounded in the room. I might have evaded the 
 queries by stating that in my Address I had not 
 entered upon or alluded to these great mysteries of 
 our religion ; but I availed myself of the opportunity 
 of so far expressing my sympathy with a portion 
 of their difficulties by stating that, although my 
 own mind was fully convinced as to the truth of 
 the main articles in this ancient hymn, neverthe- 
 less it had been a subject of regret with many 
 devout persons that these articles were expressed 
 in language not found in the Sacred Scriptures ; 
 and I told them that not long since I had received 
 a letter from one of the most devout and devoted 
 of Churchmen, the late Lord Chancellor Hather- 
 ley, in which he said that he did not consider any 
 Church or Society of men authorised to affix pains 
 or penalties, expressed or implied, for the non- 
 acceptance of a religious doctrine not expressed in 
 the ipsissima verba of Scripture. I was glad to 
 make this admission, in order that it might be 
 seen that orthodox clergymen are not the un- 
 
204 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 reasonable or unreasoning men they were often 
 presumed to be, and I think I succeeded therein/ 
 I was somewhat surprised to find that my 
 sceptical opponents were so little versed in the 
 real drift and strength of their own assumed 
 opinions : for the most part they follow, as it seems 
 to me, the dicta of the more vivacious leaders whom 
 they have selected, whether from conviction or from 
 fashion, and have personally but little worked out 
 the causes or the consequences of their own 
 objections. 
 
 At length there rose up, amidst considerable 
 applause, a gentleman who seemed to be a Cory- 
 phaeus among them. He said that one result of 
 his own studies had been the conviction that the 
 form of religion in any place very much depended 
 on its latitude and longitude, and he therefore 
 
 1 In the year following this conference at Northampton, it 
 chanced to be my lot to be anchored on a steamboat off Luxor on 
 the Nile on a Sunday. The sounds of our hymn, sung at morning 
 worship, must have been echoed over the desert from the walls 
 of the temples of Carnac, hard by. Our dragoman, a fine tall 
 Mussulman of remarkably dignified bearing, and of great natural 
 intelligence, was listening to our service. That concluded, I took 
 the opportunity of venturing a few words to him in relation there- 
 unto. My friend drew himself up, and at once stopped the 
 conversation by saying, "Sir, I am a Mahometan, not a very 
 good Mahometan, I fear, but I hope to be better : you Christians 
 worship ///r^i? Gods, Mahometans worship but One." I regretted 
 that the ancient Christian creed was so worded as to lead to the 
 Mahometan's misconception of its meaning. 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 205 
 
 "wished to ask the learned Lecturer whether in any 
 place it might be lawful to worship a crocodile." 
 He sat down amidst applause even greater than 
 that which occurred when he rose to put this 
 presumed annihilating question. 
 
 I remarked that I so far agreed with my 
 ingenious friend, that it did seem a fact that 
 locality and surrounding circumstances modify the 
 purely external forms of religion, and that if my 
 friend lived in a country abounding in crocodiles, 
 and if nothing within his own mind and spirit, and 
 if nothing external to them, suggested a different 
 form of worship, then he had better worship a croco- 
 dile than nothing at all ; but inasmuch as my friend 
 lived in the beautiful town of Northampton, where 
 I had failed to find either zoological gardens or an 
 aquarium, if he in Northampton elected to worship 
 a crocodile in lieu of any other object of worship, 
 or no worship at all, then the responsibility rested 
 with himself. It was now the Lecturer's turn to 
 hear the notes of approbation, and my objecting 
 friend found nothing to reply, notwithstanding 
 the symptoms of mirth which were exhibited 
 around him ; and I have since been told that 
 his influence among his sceptical colleagues has 
 greatly declined. 
 
NATURE, MIRACLES, AND PRAYER 
 
 Yesterday evening I had the pleasure, may I 
 say the responsible privilege, of addressing, I hope, 
 the greater part of those now present, on the 
 inconceivable immensity and multiplicity of the 
 natural things amidst which we live, and move, 
 and have our being. Inconceivable in their 
 magnitude, in their distances, and in their 
 astounding numbers, I spoke to you of millions of 
 systems or sets of universes ; each system or set, 
 like our Milky Way, containing many millions of 
 suns, and each sun surrounded by its own, possibly 
 and probably habitable worlds, or at all events by 
 one habitable world. And then I spoke to you of 
 something which always excites more deeply my 
 own astonishment, viz. that conflict of myriads of 
 millions of millions of atoms within a little glass 
 vessel, which enables the water in our pumps to 
 rise, and the gas we consume to give us heat and 
 light. So much, then, for the lifeless, inorganic 
 materials which either form a part of or surround 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 207 
 
 the abode of man. I then remarked that unless 
 these inconceivably numerous portions of matter, 
 great and small, but all in a state of violent 
 motion, were constructed and regulated in accord- 
 ance with some, to our conception, stupendous 
 schemes or plans, the result would not be the 
 beautiful order of things which we daily experience. 
 We should, in the absence of a Scheme, be sur- 
 rounded by turmoil and confusion, and by the 
 uncertainty, nay, the impossibility of life, amidst 
 the interminable chaos. The vast universe around 
 us, and of which we men form a part, must there- 
 fore be constructed and regulated on some mighty 
 scheme, at least as much a scheme as you daily 
 see in the ingenious machines you use. Now 
 amidst all this magnificent universe man, as you 
 know, is placed. An atom of sand, you might say, 
 amid myriads of sandhills ; but on reflection you 
 will correct your estimate of the poor significance 
 of man. For man, each individual man, is far more 
 wonderful, and far greater in the scale of being, 
 than are all those innumerable universes of matter 
 that I spoke of put together. In a strong sense 
 he is the lord and master of the world in which he 
 lives. Think, for instance, of the intellect of man ; 
 it pierces beyond the universe of stars ; it counts, 
 it weighs, and it measures them. He avails him- 
 self of their orderly movements for the regulation 
 
2oS DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 of his calendar ; and he makes the stars, in their 
 nightly revolution, subservient to the navigation 
 of his ships. He calls forth the lightning that 
 is hidden in a drop of water, and he makes it 
 convey his messages, with its native speed, across 
 the world — across the bed of the Atlantic, or the 
 Indian Ocean ; or else he bids it illuminate his 
 cities in the darkness of the night. His mind 
 deals with the immensities around him, and there- 
 fore claims affinity with the infinite. 
 
 But far beyond the power of his understanding, 
 man is endowed with affections ; he can love, oh ! 
 how tenderly and faithfully ; he can hate, oh ! how 
 bitterly, and without remorse. And then think for 
 a moment of his wonderful memory ; the events of 
 his own life's history treasured up in its recesses ; 
 and yet all that life's history, unfoldable, repro- 
 duceable in its general detail, within the space of a 
 few minutes. Think, again, how his mind refuses 
 to confine its workings to the immediate things 
 around him : with irrepressible, passionate curiosity 
 it insists on asking — " Whence am I ? What am I ? 
 Whither am I going ? " Amidst all the grandeur 
 of the innumerable worlds, man then, even as an 
 individual, is not the mere grain of sand on one of 
 a myriad of sandhills, but is intrinsically greater 
 than the things he sees. Each man, I say ; myself, 
 and not another. For each can say, or he has the 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 209 
 
 capacity to say, to the Lord and Governor Himself 
 of this mighty universe, " My God, my Father, and 
 my Friend." 
 
 And now, just for a moment, think also of the 
 wonderful abode in which man is placed, and of 
 which he is partially the master. He is every- 
 where surrounded by materials by which, through 
 genius and diligence, he may improve and exalt 
 his condition. Think of the uses which he makes 
 of the metals, for instance : those metals stored 
 away in abundance within the recesses of the earth, 
 but within the reach of his industry. Without 
 these metals he must remain a savage. The bones 
 of fishes would be his needles ; his saws, and axes, 
 and chisels would be found in flints. His naviga- 
 tion would be performed in the hollow of a tree, 
 laboriously scooped out with a stone ; his voyages 
 limited to his native coast, or the islands close to 
 his shore. Think by what hand, by what provident 
 mind, these metals were thus stored. And then 
 think of the beauty that surrounds him, for his 
 refreshment — the starry heavens, the rainbow, the 
 ever-varying shadowy landscape, and the inexpress- 
 ible loveliness of the flowers. And yet if this 
 being, thus placed and thus endowed, so wills it, 
 he may degrade himself below the brutes ; his 
 choice ranging from what we call the God-like to 
 the diabolical. No human being is made as a 
 
 P 
 
2IO DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 machine : he is free to choose. And then comes 
 the irrepressible question, "What does all this 
 mean ? " It is impossible not to feel assured that 
 man forms a part of some plan ; he must be a 
 link within the chain of some grand scheme. 
 What is this plan ? What is that scheme ? 
 Whence am I ? Whither am I going ? And if, 
 with some impatience, some among you may say 
 it is impossible to discern the scheme, it is all 
 " unknowable " ; if you say man's real business 
 here lies in the present only, and in making the 
 best of what immediately surrounds him ; then I 
 rejoin, "What, then, is that best that he can 
 do in this present with all that surrounds him, not 
 with a part of it only ? " And as to his question- 
 ings about the future and the unseen, why you 
 cannot stop them ; they are a part of his nature ; 
 his longings are irrepressible. The " whence " and • 
 the " whither " are bound up within the recesses of 
 his being. To stifle them you must unman the 
 man. Now, the material things around him — 
 earth, and sun, and sky — can give him no clue to 
 these obstinate questionings. Something, however 
 — something deep within his own being — some- 
 thing that he cannot either fathom or silence within 
 his heart, whispers, at all events when the man is 
 quiet and away from the world's din, that his body, 
 after all, may not be the whole of himself; some- 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 211 
 
 thing whispers that his material frame is not the 
 thinking, living self. It would be a hard task to 
 persuade him in the calmness of the night, or on a 
 sick bed, or in trouble, that memory is, after all, 
 only a mode of motion, love a mode of motion, hate 
 and jealousy only a conflict of atoms. Nor can a 
 fair and prudent man overlook the fact that in all 
 ages the wisest and best men, from Socrates and 
 Plato downwards, have believed and have taught 
 that there is an after life of the man's real being 
 in the unseen world ; memory, knowledge, affection, 
 all active there in that unseen world, only in a more 
 exalted, freer condition. This all good and wise 
 men of old hoped for, but confessed it was not more 
 than a hope. They groped for certainty, if, happily, 
 they might find it. Plato, in one of his most touch- 
 ing dialogues, concluded that it was safe for a man to 
 pray to God, and he expressed his conviction that 
 one day God would send some teacher on earth, 
 who should instruct men as to prayer and immor- 
 tality. And observe what, after all, makes this 
 question of a future life, this question of the 
 whither, of so much importance to us, is because 
 man certainly is a part of some great scheme, and 
 the question comes, " If after death he continues 
 to live on, under this great scheme, what will his 
 condition then be ? " If the scheme of human life, 
 after death, at all resembles the present scheme in 
 
2 1 2 DIFFICUL TIES IN BELIEF 
 
 which we Hve — resembles it in its essence, and not 
 in its accidents — then the consequences of actions 
 will follow the living man ; and although in the 
 present scheme, no doubt, bad men rise sometimes 
 to eminence, and good men are sometimes over- 
 looked, yet after all, even in this world, the essence 
 of the course of things is that no bad man is in this 
 world rewarded because he is a bad man ; nor is 
 a good man depressed or punished simply on 
 account of his virtue. Nay, the contrary is the 
 general tendency of things even in this world. 
 And in this way hopes and fears as to the 
 nature of the scheme in which man, after death, 
 may have to live, are natural ; or, rather, are un- 
 avoidable to man. He cannot avoid this hop- 
 ing or fearing. But, after all, these are hopes 
 alone and fears alone — they are not sure and 
 certain hope. Nature, the things around us, 
 tell us little or nothing as to a world beyond the 
 grave. The Nature within us gives us, indeed, 
 longings ; gives us uneasiness, hopes, fears, and 
 probabilities ; but it gives us nothing more. 
 Now, amidst this darkness, amidst this dim 
 suggestive light of Nature, history comes in : a 
 history the general facts of which it is impossible 
 to deny ; no true, no sane man, ever did deny the 
 general features and the general scope of the 
 records of Christ's life. I am not speaking of the 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 213 
 
 details, but the fact simply of the life and the 
 death of Christ. He certainly did live — He 
 certainly did teach — He certainly died upon the 
 Cross. The history states that about two thousand 
 years ago there appeared a man upon the earth, 
 reared among a most singular people, whose 
 singularity remains unmistakeable to the present 
 hour, for no man can mistake the physiognomy of 
 a Jew. This wonderful man unquestionably spoke 
 and taught as no man had ever spoken and 
 taught before. That is a matter of fact. His 
 sayings and His teachings remain among us to 
 this day, and they have changed and improved 
 the habits and ways of thought of the civilised 
 world. The records of this wonderful Teacher 
 leave no doubt that His character was incompar- 
 ably the most virtuous and exalted that had ever 
 been exhibited before men. He went about 
 doing good ; that is a certain matter of history. 
 The record further states of Him that He, at all 
 events, claimed to be sent forth from the Lord 
 and Governor of the Universe, in order that He 
 might make known the will of that Lord and 
 Governor as respects man, and as respects the 
 destiny that awaits him in the unseen world after 
 death. The record states that He claimed to be 
 the Son of God in a strong and intimate sense, 
 such as no being before or since has ever claimed. 
 
2 1 4 DIFFIC UL TIES IN BEL lEF 
 
 He plainly taught the immortality of the soul — a 
 revelation only hoped for by Socrates and Plato, 
 and by the best among the ancient sages. He 
 taught that God was our Father, and that He 
 sought for His earthly children's love. " God," 
 said He, " is no respecter of persons, but in every 
 nation he that feareth God and worketh righteous- 
 ness is accepted of Him." And again, " God is a 
 Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh 
 such to worship Him." Now it is quite certain 
 that no other teacher or prophet had ever before, 
 in the course of the world's history, laid such 
 claim to a filial relationship to God. He plainly 
 declared that He was more than man. But where 
 was the proof of this new, this hitherto unheard 
 of claim ? To say that He taught more wisely 
 than any man had ever taught before amounts to 
 no more (but it amounts to no less) than this — 
 that He was the wisest of all human teachers. 
 But if He be more than man, then, of necessity, 
 He was stronger and more powerful than man ; 
 and the only way to make good that claim was to 
 exhibit superhuman power, and, I may add, super- 
 human goodness also. And so, in fact, the record 
 tells us that He went about doing wonderful works 
 of goodness and love. He healed sick men, the 
 record tells us he healed them at a word ; at a word. 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 215 
 
 the record says, He made the dumb to speak, and 
 the deaf to hear : by His voice, it says. He hushed 
 the storm, and there was a great cahn. He is said 
 to have raised a poor widow's only son to life, 
 and to have restored the friend that He loved to 
 the affectionate family who, above all others, had 
 shown Him a reverential respect. Now, let us 
 remember that He said Himself that He was 
 superhuman ; He claimed to be more than a man. 
 But where was the use or the truth of such a claim 
 if He who made the claim did not prove His 
 words by deeds ? Such a claim, apart from the 
 exhibition of superhuman power, would have been 
 — I dare not say ridiculous or preposterous — but 
 it would have been, at least, puzzling, inconsistent. 
 There would have been a missing link had this 
 wonderful Being shown no wonderful superhuman 
 work — if he had exhibited no miracles, as we call 
 them. Further still, the record says that Christ 
 Himself appealed strongly to His wonderful works 
 — all of these works, works of love and mercy, let 
 us remember. " If ye believe not my words, 
 believe my works." " If I had not done among 
 them things that none other men have done, they 
 would not have had sin " in rejecting me. 
 
 Now it has been alleged — and here lies the 
 gist of all my remarks — that this record of Christ 
 cannot be reasonably believed, because these 
 
21 6 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 miracles are utterly contrary to the laws of Nature. 
 There must be some grievous mistake, some error 
 or misrepresentation, accidental or intentional, in 
 the record, it is said ; for Nature is uniform in 
 her operations. The operations of Nature, it is 
 urged, go upon a fixed plan, and it is contrary to 
 all Nature, it is said, that diseases should be cured 
 at a word, or the dead restored to life at human com- 
 mand. This is contrary to all experience, contrary 
 to the order and the laws of Nature. The record, 
 it is argued, is, on that account, certainly at 
 fault. 
 
 Now it is here then that the issue is joined. 
 It is strongly and confidently affirmed that the 
 miracles recorded of Christ are contrary to the 
 uniform laws of Nature ; and this contrariety is 
 alleged as an unanswerable argument against 
 Christianity. To this, I think, I have a most valid, 
 satisfactory, and complete reply. I would ask, 
 for instance, what is this NATURE, of whose 
 laws you say that the miracles of Christ are 
 violations ? Surely by Nature must be meant all 
 that exists, or has existed, or can exist, whether 
 in the universe of matter or the universe of thought ; 
 seen, or unseen. Whatever actually is, is a part 
 of Nature. And what are these laws of Nature 
 which we so strongly appeal to } By the laws of 
 Nature I can only properly mean the scheme or 
 
DIFFIC UL TIES IN BELIEF 1 1 7 
 
 the plan on which things are constructed and are 
 carried on. A small part, and a very small part 
 only of this scheme, man becomes acquainted with ; 
 enough only whereby to regulate his own life. 
 He knows the law of gravitation, for instance ; 
 that all material bodies attract each other, after a 
 fashion ; and, mark you, he knows even this little 
 part of the scheme of Nature simply because 
 under like circumstances like events have taken 
 place. He knows some little also of the laws of 
 heat and of light, because he finds again that under 
 the same circumstances the same phenomena of 
 light and of heat occur. No human physician has 
 ever been known to cure a disease by a word — ' 
 but by a dose of quinine certain fevers have been 
 uniformly allayed. These, then, are parts of the 
 law, parts of the scheme or plan of natural things 
 as far as we see them. Remember, it is alone from 
 observing that certain circumstances have hitherto 
 always followed certain others, that any law of the 
 plan of Nature is arrived at, or even guessed at. 
 There must be many, many repetitions — repetitions 
 of like concurrent circumstances, else no law or plan 
 in the scheme of Nature is, or can be, discoverable. 
 Now tell me, how often has a Being come 
 among us, claiming to tell us from the unknown 
 world what it concerns us beyond all things to 
 know, but which without such message cannot be 
 
2 1 8 DIFFIC UL TIES IN BELIEF 
 
 known ? Such an event has occurred but once in 
 the world's history. If such a Being did proceed 
 from the unknown world He would bear, He must 
 bear, superhuman tokens with Him; and this is just 
 what the record says He did. The message, the 
 claim, the environments are itnique in the world's 
 history ; and the record says He performed 
 superhuman acts. The sequence of the environ- 
 ments, the miracles, that is, cannot be foreseen or 
 judged of, if not immoral. The whole question, 
 in fact, is a question of the veracity of the history ; 
 it is not a question of experience, not a question 
 of the law of the scheme of Nature. This 
 scheme of Nature is, as I have said, far too vast 
 for us to form notions of, excepting so far as what 
 comes daily and repeatedly — repeatedly before 
 our eyes. Think oi the innumerable suns and 
 worlds of which I spoke last night, and of the still 
 more marvellous world of atoms in the little box 
 of air. The truth is that as to the scheme of 
 Nature, as to the plan of the universe, we must be 
 content to be learners, not critics ; still less can we 
 be prophets. We have no valid reason whatever 
 to say of this event, or of that, that it is contrary 
 to the laws of Nature, until we have had repeated 
 and repeated experience that the alleged mira- 
 culous event did not happen under the circum- 
 stances of the case in point. 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 219 
 
 Now, amidst all the centuries of man's sin, and 
 of man's ignorance, and oi man's suffering, and of 
 man's longing to be freed from sin and ignorance 
 and suffering, never but once has there appeared on 
 this earth a Being who said that He came from the 
 unseen world, as the Son of God, for the purpose 
 of delivering man from his ignorance, and sorrow, 
 and degradation. Once for all, this wonderful 
 Being proclaimed immortality to man : He pro- 
 claimed, once for all, that God loves and seeks for 
 the love of His creatures on earth. Once for all, 
 the record says that He performed almost cease- 
 less acts of superhuman power ; but, be it observed, 
 these all were acts as remarkable for their love as 
 they were for their wonderful power. Once for 
 all, the record says, this wonderful Man died upon 
 the Cross for the sin of man. Once for all, the 
 record says, He rose from the dead in token of a 
 sure and certain hope of our resurrection also. 
 The advent of this solitary, of this unique Man, 
 stands alone as the most momentous event in the 
 world's history. You may, if you see good reason, 
 question the truth of the history ; you may, nay 
 you ought to examine and criticise the truth of 
 the record, if you have really the means of so 
 doing at your disposal ; but there is another thing 
 that you cannot with any show of reason do, and 
 that is, you cannot declare that the miraculous 
 
220 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 history of Christ is contrary to the laws of Nature. 
 You must understand all the plan, all the scheme 
 of Nature before you can say of such a history 
 that it violates its laws. If the history be true, it 
 is itself a part of the scheme of Nature, and such 
 it claims to be. // claims to be natural. 
 
 Now, my friends, I will propose to you a test 
 of the truth of this wonderful Gospel, this good 
 news of God's love to man, which test every one 
 of yourselves may apply. Christ in this history, 
 in this Gospel recorded once for all, promises 
 peace of mind ; he promises virtue in life and a 
 loving heart to any man who will try to live the 
 life that He enjoins, and in the way that He 
 demands. The offer and the promise are open 
 and free to all men — free as the air we live in. 
 " Come unto Me, all ye that travail and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." The chief, the 
 proper, the universal test of the truth of Christianity 
 then, lies in the two little words — Try it. Try if 
 it be a law of Nature ; try it. 
 
 I come now to a necessarily very brief discus- 
 sion of the second subject of my promised address 
 to you — to the question of prayer to God. You 
 need not me to tell you this is a very solemn 
 question. I know there have been men who call 
 themselves, and are called by some others, philo- 
 sophers, who treat the bare thought of prayer with 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 221 
 
 disdain. They tell you that the laws of Nature 
 are fixed and unalterable, and that no amount of 
 childish entreaty can stay the fall of a house, if 
 the foundation be rotten ; or the course of the 
 cholera, if the habits of the people be not clean. 
 They ridicule the idea of so poor a thing as man 
 changing the purposes of the Supreme Ruler ot 
 the Universe, at the importunity of an impatient 
 wish. The laws of Nature will and must take 
 their course. One among these materialistic 
 philosophers has illustrated his objection by point- 
 ing to a flower. There may come, he said, a 
 storm, born in the Atlantic Ocean, and that storm 
 itself preceded by certain inevitable changes there, 
 which shall sweep across the land, and the hour 
 and the moment are fated when and where that 
 flower shall be thrown upon the ground. All the 
 prayers of a nation could not, he says, prevent the 
 storm or the falling of a single petal. So our 
 philosopher says. But we shall presently see how 
 far all such objection to prayer can be removed. 
 First of all, then, the real object, the real nature 
 of prayer is mis-stated by our philosopher : to 
 that I will revert soon. And as to these laws of 
 Nature being fixed and unalterable, I reply, it 
 probably may be, or is so. But what are these 
 laws of that vast, immeasurable, incomprehensible 
 scheme of Nature to which you appeal ? Do you 
 
222 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 in reality know these laws, all of them ? Nature is 
 too large a scheme for you to grasp. Do you know 
 so much the origin and final issue of any one thing? 
 And what do you know of the action of Mind 
 and of Will in Nature ? If there be a Supreme 
 mind, a governing intelligence, how do you know 
 that the relations between my mind and those of 
 the Supreme mind may not be changed : changed 
 by an alteration in mine, and that consequences 
 untold and untellable by man may not ensue ? 
 And as to the petals of the flower which are 
 doomed to fall by the storm, born days or weeks 
 before in the Atlantic — are you so sure it must 
 fall ? What if a friendly hand, guided by a friendly 
 mind, interposed a screen ? What if my neigh- 
 bour had built up a haystack before the storm 
 arose ? What then of the falling flower and the 
 storm born in the Atlantic. 
 
 But then, again, we reply : You mistake the 
 nature of the true prayer of the Christian. Prayer 
 does not consist in childish, importunate requests 
 to the Governor of the Universe. That wonderful 
 Teacher, more than human, who set us an example 
 that we should follow His steps, passed a whole life 
 of prayer ; but that prayer was, not that the stones 
 might be made bread, to appease His hunger ; 
 was not that He might be held up, if He cast 
 Himself down from a precipice ; that prayer was 
 
DIFFICUL TIES IN BEIIEF 223 
 
 not that in His agony He might be taken off the 
 Cross ; but it was, " Father, not My will, but 
 Thine be done." " Not as I will, but as Thou 
 wilt." That, after all, is the true model of the 
 true Christian's prayer. Not simply, may the 
 cholera be stayed, or the storm be appeased, or 
 the rain or the drought be removed ; but the 
 wiser prayer w^ould be, " Father, not our will, but 
 Thine be done ; if it be possible, relieve us ; 
 if not, impart to us resignation to Thy decree." 
 For, observe, the law of prayer is not that we 
 are necessarily to obtain the very thing which 
 it may be, after all, unwise for us to ask, or 
 noxious for us, or impossible ; but the law of the 
 promise attached to the Christian's prayer is, 
 " Peace of mind ; peace of mind." The Christian 
 doctrine of prayer is this, " In everything, by 
 prayer and thanksgiving, let your requests be 
 made known unto God," and then what is to 
 follow ? Is it promised that every request shall 
 be granted ? Ah ! no. What bitter calamities 
 w^ould then be the issue of some of our ignorant, 
 passionate, foolish prayers. No ; He who bids 
 us " Pray without ceasing " is wiser to us than we 
 to ourselves. The injunction is, " In everything 
 with prayer and thanksgiving let your requests 
 be made known unto God," and the promise is, 
 " and the Peace of God, which passeth all 
 
224 DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 
 
 understanding, shall fill and keep your hearts." 
 And again, "Thou shalt keep him in perfect 
 peace whose mind is stayed on God." So when 
 the mother, as she hears the howling of the storm, 
 offers up a prayer to the Eternal Father that He 
 would preserve her sailor boy, then tossing upon 
 the waves, she cannot, or should not really mean 
 that God should interpose His power and hush 
 the winds on her behalf; but her heart's true 
 meaning is that God may appease her fears, and 
 give her strength and peace of mind to abide the 
 issue. So her heart's true prayer is heard, 
 whether her sailor boy survives the storm or no. 
 In point of fact, the true, the main object of the 
 Christian's prayer is the intercommunication of 
 his own spirit with the Spirit of the Lord, and, 
 through this intercommunication, to beget at 
 length resemblance to that Spirit. A high and 
 a mighty and a most wonderful privilege. Since 
 the world was, in any of the religions of the 
 world not Christian, in any of the teachings of 
 the philosophers, hath it ever been heard that the 
 Lord of the Universe has said, " Thou sJialt love 
 the Lord thy God ? — not only fear and obey, but 
 actually and sincerely love, the Lord thy God, 
 with all thy heart." Love Him as a Father, 
 plead with Him as a son, trust Him as an infant 
 nestles in its mother's arms and fears no evil. 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN BELIEF 225 
 
 That, that, my friends, is true communion with 
 God, that is Christian prayer, that is Christian 
 faith ; that is — shall I say it ? — that is the great, 
 the wonderful Law of Nature, as the Author of 
 that Nature has Himself framed it. Obey that 
 Law. Try whether it be the law or not. Try 
 it ; and so, " Lift up your hearts." 
 
IX 
 
 THE MIRACLE IN JOSHUA— 
 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 It will be remembered by at least a few of 
 the more elderly of the readers of the Guardian 
 that some years ago I rescued the great miracle 
 of the Star of the Magi from an attempt to 
 explain it, or explain it away, by a reference to 
 the natural cause of an ordinary astronomical 
 phenomenon, taken advantage of by the Provi- 
 dence of God.^ The thought is said to have 
 originated with that truly great astronomer Kepler, 
 who assigned the phenomenon of the Star of the 
 Magi to a remarkable conjunction of the planets 
 Jupiter and Saturn. Perhaps it may be here 
 advisable to remark that the technical phrase 
 " conjunction " does not necessarily imply any 
 very close proximity. It was indeed a consider- 
 able feat for Kepler, in his day, to compute the 
 circumstances of a phenomenon which had oc- 
 curred so many centuries before ; but not having 
 the proper means and methods at his disposal, he 
 
 ^ Repeated from Essay X. 
 
230 THE BA TTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 assigned a much closer proximity to the two 
 planets than the true state of the case warranted. 
 The suggested explanation was first brought to 
 public notice in England by the late Dean Alford, 
 who, from the German authorities to which he 
 referred, stated that the two planets appeared in 
 the heavens so close together that to ordinary 
 eyes they formed a single star of surpassing 
 brightness, and in this condition " stood over the 
 place where the young child was." I was struck 
 with this account, but I somewhat doubted its 
 accuracy. Happily, as one result of my old 
 Cambridge education, I was enabled to set to 
 work and compute for my own satisfaction the 
 exact position of the two planets throughout 
 several years contiguous to B.C. 6. Accordingly, 
 I found in that year three conjunctions of the 
 two planets, one of which was visible at Jerusalem ; 
 and the two preceding conjunctions might also 
 have been watched by travellers during their slow 
 and distant journey from the remote East to 
 Jerusalem. Perhaps it ought here to be mentioned 
 that the orbits and motions of the two planets are 
 such that in certain recurring epochs three con- 
 junctions must take place in one and the same 
 year. This certainly was the case in the year 
 B.C. 6. But after careful calculation I found that 
 the two planets could not have approached nearer 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 231 
 
 than by two apparent diameters of the moon — a dis- 
 tance which precluded the possibility of their ap- 
 pearing to form a single star. Independently of this, 
 it was easy to show that no known astronomical 
 phenomenon could accord with the statement that it 
 stood over any particular house in Bethlehem ; and 
 as to the two planets in question, if the direction 
 of the apparent motion of the two planets during 
 an evening had been followed by the Magi, they 
 would have been led, not to the hill of Bethlehem, 
 but more probably into the pools of Solomon ! 
 Thus the great miracle which ushered in human 
 redemption remains undiluted by any known or 
 knowable causes connected with such laws of 
 Nature as those with which we have to do. The 
 details relating to the preceding investigations 
 will be found in the Dictionary of the Bible, in the 
 two articles headed " Star of the Magi " and 
 "Jesus Christ," and the technical parts of them 
 are recorded in a memoir printed in the Memoirs 
 of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxv. 
 
 The great question of miracles in general 
 remains still to be discussed ; but I think an 
 interesting contribution towards it will be found 
 in a paper which I read a few years ago before 
 the Church Congress at Swansea.^ 
 
 Strange to say, there has again, and very 
 
 1 Essay X. 
 
232 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 recently, cropped up another attempt to explain 
 — though I am far from saying to explain away 
 — another of the most important and sublime 
 among the miracles recorded in the Bible, by a 
 reference to natural causes — in this case to an 
 increase in the intensity or amount of atmospheric 
 refraction. I refer to remarks which, though they 
 in fact originated many years ago, have again 
 reappeared in popular treatises. In this case 
 they apply to that sublimest of narratives 
 contained in the tenth chapter of the Book of 
 Joshua : — " Then spake Joshua to the Lord 
 in the sight of Israel ; Sun, stand thou still upon 
 Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. 
 So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and 
 hasted not to go down about a whole day." 
 
 Before I proceed to show that no amount of 
 increase in atmospheric refraction could in the 
 slightest degree explain the marvellous phenomena 
 of the sun and the moon standing still for " about 
 a whole day," or even, as our author adds, for 
 " perhaps some hours after they have set," or even 
 for a single hour, it will be necessary for the 
 reader to recall the singularly interesting circum- 
 stances of Joshua's battle of Beth-horon. The 
 materials for the history may be found partly in 
 Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestijie, partly in Dr. 
 Robinson's Researches in Palestine, vol. ii., section 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 233 
 
 13, June 9, and partly by consulting the seven- 
 teenth sheet of the magnificent Atlas of the 
 Palestine Exploration Fund. We may thereby 
 follow the heroic captain of the hosts almost mile 
 by mile along the road which led from Gibeon, 
 through the two Beth-horons, down to the valley 
 of Ajalon, and then back to the caves where he 
 slew the five kings, and, in fact, throughout that 
 most memorable day, of which it is truly said, 
 " There was no day like that, before it or after 
 it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a 
 man." In order clearly to understand the sublimity 
 of the miracle and the utter futility of the explaining 
 it in the slightest degree by any increase in the 
 intensity of atmospheric refraction, it will be 
 necessary to follow the flight of the discomfited 
 Amorites from Gibeon to Ajalon. Nor will the 
 reader find it without its interest. 
 
 It will be remembered, then, that the Israelites 
 had recently crossed the Jordan in early spring ; 
 they were now encamped at Gilgal, between 
 Jericho and the Jordan, about two or three miles 
 from the latter. Gibeon lay at a distance of about 
 twelve miles to the west of Gilgal, and the inhabit- 
 ants of the former city had, through a stratagem, 
 made their well-known compact with Joshua. 
 After the invasion of the country and the fall of 
 Jericho, the kings or sheikhs of South Palestine had 
 
234 THE BATTLE OF BETH- HO RON 
 
 naturally banded together with a view of taking 
 vengeance on Gibeon, and of expelling the invader 
 from the land. Accordingly they were now 
 encamped in full force near to Gibeon, which city 
 they would infallibly have soon destroyed, and 
 from thence march on to do battle with Joshua. 
 
 The Gibeonites in their terror appealed to 
 Joshua for instant aid ; the peril and the crisis 
 were great, and equally great they were for the 
 nation of Israel itself, seeing that, if defeated either 
 at Gibeon or at Gilgal, they would be chased across 
 Jordan, and probably be exterminated. Thus 
 a battle decisive in the world's history was at 
 hand, if ever there was a " decisive battle " in the 
 world. Joshua, perceiving the full significance of 
 the situation, at once set off from Gilgal with his 
 army ; and marching by night with haste through 
 those heavy twelve miles, arrived at early dawn, 
 or before the dawn, under the walls of Gibeon, 
 just as the British forces marched by night to the 
 works of Tel-el-Kebir. The Canaanites were evi- 
 dently surprised, as the Arabs in Egypt were. 
 How long or how hardly they resisted is not 
 recorded ; but, in the sequel, they fled from 
 Gibeon along the road which leads towards the 
 two Beth-horons, just as the Arabs fled from Tel- 
 el-Kebir towards Zagazig. It is not, however, so 
 much with the surprise or the fight at Gibeon 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 235 
 
 that we have now to do, as with the nature and 
 direction of the road along which the confederated 
 Canaanites fled. It was probably the same road 
 along which the Apostle Paul was conducted from 
 Jerusalem to Caesarea. It bore mainly to the 
 west, but a little to the north. This direction of 
 the road becomes of importance for the full under- 
 standing of the miracle which ensues. For about 
 six miles from Gibeon it was probably rough and 
 difficult, as Dr. Robinson found it when he tra- 
 versed it some thirty or forty years ago, though 
 centuries before that the Romans had improved 
 it About six miles from Gibeon, at the crest of 
 the hill over which the road passes at Upper Beth- 
 horon, it becomes a precipitous descent of some 
 seven hundred feet in about two miles down to 
 Lower Beth-horon. It is important to bear in 
 mind that Joshua's face had been turned towards 
 the west and a little to the north when he arrived 
 at the crest of the hill in hot pursuit of the enemy, 
 who were now rushing down the sharp descent be- 
 fore him. Shall the Amorites even partially escape ? 
 Will there be time left to complete their destruc- 
 tion, or will the terrors and hazards of that bloody 
 day have to be repeated ? These were questions 
 naturally occurring to the mind of the heroic 
 captain as he stood on the crest of that fateful 
 hill. From the sacred narrative we gather that 
 
236 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 Joshua now turned his face away from the fugi- 
 tives round towards Gibeon, which had heretofore 
 been behind him. There stood the sun right over 
 the hills of Gibeon, between the south and the 
 east, but much nigher to the east. (Dr. Robinson, 
 in his itinerary, says that " Ajalon bears S. 66"" 
 W. from Upper Beth-horon " : and, measuring from 
 the map, Gibeon bears from the same spot about 
 S. 60° E.) It was now, therefore, about nine 
 o'clock on the morning of that memorable day — 
 anyhow, it could not have been quite noon, as 
 Dean Stanley supposes, when Joshua stood looking 
 anxiously at the sun. The moon, too, now prob- 
 ably in its third or fourth quarter, stood nearly 
 west of him, but a little to the south, over the 
 valley of Ajalon. He would need their light, if 
 his work for the deliverance of Israel was to be 
 completed on that day. How long will the light 
 of that day last.? So with the voice of faith in 
 his father's God, and, as Dean Stanley says, 
 " With outstretched hand and spear, that hand 
 which he drew not back when he stretched out 
 the spear," he stands and he cries in the sight of 
 Israel, " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and 
 thou. Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the 
 Lord hearkened to his voice, and the sun stood 
 still, and the moon stayed until the people had 
 avenged themselves upon their enemies, and it 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 237 
 
 hasted not to go down about a whole day." The 
 pursuit continues down the precipitous road to 
 Lower Beth-Horon, perhaps two miles distant, 
 and downwards still towards the valley of Ajalon, 
 six or seven miles further on. Meanwhile the five 
 kings endeavour to secrete themselves in one of 
 those caves which abound in the country. Joshua, 
 however, delays not for them ; he orders the 
 mouth of the cave to be closed and he pursues 
 the fugitives to their destruction. On his return, 
 before the sun went down on that protracted and 
 most memorable day, the five kings are brought 
 out of their hiding-place, and meet their doom. 
 Such was the Battle of Beth-horon, and, under such 
 circumstances, it pleased the Lord to hearken to the 
 voice of a man, and the sun and the moon stood still. 
 
 Now it has been recently affirmed that " the 
 simple natural law of atmospheric refraction would 
 entirely explaiii the events On examination 
 it will be found that this " simple natural law " 
 will no more explain the event than the conjunc- 
 tion of Jupiter and Saturn will explain the miracle 
 of the Star of the Magi. Atmospheric refraction, 
 when really understood, will not be found to so 
 much as even touch the miracle. 
 
 The understanding and the settlement of this 
 question require nothing more than a very elemen- 
 tary acquaintance with the nature of astronomical 
 
238 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 refraction, but that knowledge must be clear and 
 accurate as far as it goes. The average effect, 
 then, of astronomical refraction is to very slightly 
 raise the celestial bodies when they are viewed 
 through our atmosphere, but that average effect is 
 so slight that it requires a telescope, and generally 
 a micrometer, in order to be conscious of its effects. 
 When the luminary is very close to the horizon, or 
 on it, or just below it, the sun or the moon may 
 be raised vertically through an angular space about 
 equal to their diameters, and slightly more if it 
 be very cold. But these cases could not occur 
 when Joshua first said, " Sun, stand thou still," 
 for it could not as yet have been noon, and the 
 moon was still over the valley of Ajalon. No 
 doubt, if it pleased the All-wise Disposer of things 
 to increase the refractive power of air, its capacity 
 for increasing the vertical heigJit of a luminary 
 would be proportionally increased ; but whatever 
 this increase of refractive power be, no amount of 
 it could keep a luminary apparently still in the 
 heavens, for the ''simple natural laiv of atmospJieric 
 refraction " is to apparently move a luminary 
 vertically upwards, and in no degree whatever to 
 the right or to the left of a vertical line. (Techni- 
 cally, refraction acts solely in a vertical plane, and 
 does not in any degree alter the Azimuth.) Hence, 
 in no conceivable way could refraction keep sun 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 239 
 
 or moon apparently still in the heavens ; it might, 
 indeed, if altered egregiously in intensity and in 
 laiv too, keep a luminary at the same height in the 
 heavens ; but it could not keep it apparently still. 
 Either inattention to, or ignorance of, this true 
 and simple law of atmospheric refraction must, 
 I submit, have given rise to so very serious and 
 mischievous an error, especially lamentable in 
 connection with so sacred a subject. 
 
 Further still, in the case of the sun, one simple 
 natural law of refraction must have been actually 
 reversed during the first three hours or so after the 
 voice of Joshua. For the natural sun was then 
 rising in height, and, therefore, in order to remain 
 apparently still, refraction must have pulled it 
 down ! 
 
 In the case of the moon matters I fear would 
 be worse. For let us observe that the moon was 
 not far from setting ; if we are to believe the 
 sacred narrative it must have continued, apparently, 
 there ''for about the space of a ivhole dayT If so, 
 before the termination of that great and notable 
 day, the natural moon must have passed its lower 
 culmination, and then the effect of the "simple 
 natural law of refraction " increased in intensity, 
 would inevitably bring the moon up to and above 
 the eastern horizon, and by no possibility over the 
 valley of Ajalon — a dilemma from which I cannot 
 
240 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 rescue it. Such then is the fate of these ill-advised 
 attempts to explain the viodiis operandi of the sublime 
 miracle of the ever-memorable day of the Battle of 
 Beth-horon by what is called natural causation, 
 however intensified in amount For the causation 
 of miracles does not lie within the action of the 
 laws which ordinarily appertain to this sublunary 
 sphere of ours whereon our duties lie. On the 
 other hand, and as I have urged before, that 
 seems to me to be the happiest form of mind, 
 which accepts the statements in the Sacred 
 Scriptures in the spirit wherewith a child listens to 
 his father's words. Far less happy, and probably 
 far less wise, is the spirit which scans and criti- 
 cises them as a lawyer reads a legal document. 
 To me the records are, in their general drift and 
 intention, substantially true. In the case of the 
 Battle of Beth-horon, in which the very existence 
 of the Hebrew nation was in peril, the narrative 
 may be satisfied in its general drift and intention 
 by the miraculous continuance of daylight which 
 in a rude age, and to Joshua and his host, might 
 seem to involve the staying of the courses of the 
 sun and moon. The Star of the Magi will be 
 equally satisfied in its general drift and intention, 
 by the miraculous appearance of some divinely 
 appointed light, shining as a celestial diadem 
 over the cradle of the King of Kings. To each 
 
THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 241 
 
 of the two cases we may safely apply the words 
 of Horace — 
 
 " Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus." 
 
 There is, however, another class of what. In 
 some sense, may be termed minor miracles, which 
 have most unreasonably met with scorn and 
 ridicule from writers at whose hands we should 
 have expected a graver mode of treatment. I 
 allude to such miracles as the finding of the coin 
 in the fish's mouth ; the foretelling of the man 
 who was to meet the disciples, bearing the 
 pitcher of water ; to the fire of coals kindled on 
 the beach after their long night's toil upon the 
 lake. To some minds, these may seem to be but 
 trifles unworthy of any special interposition. But 
 without again entering upon the nature and 
 occasions of miracles already discussed, we may 
 use a simple and more practical form of argument. 
 We might fairly ask what would be the effect of 
 the remembrance of such minute instances of a 
 prescient concern, upon the minds of men like 
 Paul and Silas sitting in the prison with their 
 feet fast in the stocks ? In a like spirit we may 
 ask whether amidst the hourly perils and sufferings 
 of the first preachers of the Gospel, the recol- 
 lection of these instances of a minute and prescient 
 carefulness would not recur to their minds again 
 
242 THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON 
 
 and again, administering the support, and confi- 
 dence, and consolation which they so greatly 
 needed at every hour of their mission ? When 
 our Master was with us, did He not share our 
 sufferings and foresee our needs ? And did He 
 not say : " I am with you always, to the end of 
 the world " ? 
 
X 
 
 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 Until the last few years the interpretation of 
 St. Matt xi. I-I2 by theologians in general 
 coincided in the main with that which would be 
 given by any person of ordinary intelligence who 
 read the account with due attention. The inter- 
 pretation would be after this fashion : some super- 
 natural light resembling a star had appeared in 
 some country (presumably Persia), far to the east 
 of Jerusalem, to men who were versed in the study 
 of celestial phenomena, conveying to their minds 
 an impulse to repair to Jerusalem, where they 
 would find a new-born king. It supposed them 
 to be followers and possibly priests of the Zend 
 religion, whereby they were led to expect a 
 Redeemer in the person of the Jewish religion. 
 It is needless to say that part of the above account 
 of the Magi and their country is simply conjectural. 
 On arriving at Jerusalem, after diligent inquiry 
 and consultation with the priests and learned men, 
 who naturally could best inform them, they were 
 
246 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 directed to proceed to Bethlehem. The remark 
 made by the Evangelist regarding the effect pro- 
 duced in Jerusalem by the arrival of these strange 
 visitors on so strange a mission is significant as 
 showing the publicity of the circumstances in 
 question : " And when Herod the king heard it, 
 he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him." 
 
 The star which they had seen in the East reap- 
 peared to them, and preceded them until it took up 
 its station over the place where the young child was. 
 
 The whole proceeding, that is, was supernatural, 
 and formed a part of that divine prearrangement 
 whereby, in His deep humiliation among men, 
 the child Jesus was honoured and acknowledged by 
 the Father as His beloved Son in whom he was 
 well pleased. Thus the lowly shepherds who 
 kept their nightly watch in the plain at the foot 
 of Bethlehem, equally and together with all that 
 remained of the highest and best philosophy of 
 the East, are alike the witnesses and the partakers 
 of the glory of Him who was born in the city of 
 David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. 
 
 Such is substantially the account which, until 
 the earlier part of the present century, would have 
 been given by orthodox divines of the Star of the 
 Magi, and there are still the strongest grounds for 
 believing that such also is substantially the correct 
 interpretation of the Sacred Record. 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 247 
 
 Latterly, however, a very different opinion has 
 gradually become prevalent on the subject. The 
 Star itself, as such, has been displaced from the 
 category of a supernatural light, and has been 
 referred to the ordinary and periodical pheno- 
 menon of a conjunction or near approach of the 
 planets Jupiter and Saturn. This idea originated 
 with the illustrious astronomer Kepler, who, among 
 other brilliant but untenable fancies, supposed that 
 if he could identify a conjunction of the above- 
 named planets with the apparition of the Star of 
 Bethlehem, he would thereby be able to establish 
 on the basis of certainty the otherwise very 
 obscure and difficult question as to the exact date 
 of the Annus Domini. Kepler's suggestion was 
 worked out with great care and no very great in- 
 accuracy by Dr. Ideler, of Berlin, and the results 
 of his calculations do, on the first impression, seem 
 to show a very specious accordance with the 
 phenomena narrated by the Evangelist. I purpose, 
 then, in the first instance, to state what astronomical 
 phenomena did occur with respect to the planets 
 Jupiter and Saturn at or somewhere about a pre- 
 sumed date of our Lord's nativity, and then to 
 examine how far they fulfil or fail to fulfil (as they 
 certainly do fail) the conditions required by the 
 narrative of St. Matthew. 
 
 In the month of May B.C. 7 {i.e. about three 
 
248 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 years before the generally accepted date of our 
 Lord's nativity) a conjunction or near approach of 
 the planets Jupiter and Saturn occurred, not far 
 from the first point of Aries, the planets rising, in 
 Chaldea, some time about three and a half hours 
 before the sun. 
 
 It is said that (on astrological grounds) such 
 a conjunction could not fail to excite the attention 
 of men like the Magi, and that in consequence 
 partly of their knowledge of the prophecy of 
 Balaam, and partly from the uneasy persuasion 
 then said to be prevalent that some great one 
 was to be born in the East, these Magi thereon 
 proceeded in their journey to Jerusalem. In the 
 interests of truth it is well to bear in mind how 
 much of the above explanation is founded on con- 
 jecture. Supposing, however, that the Magi set 
 out at the end of May on a journey which it is 
 just conceivable may have occupied some seven 
 months or more, then in the course of that 
 journey they must have seen the two planets 
 slowly separating from each other until the end of 
 July ; after this date, their motions becoming retro- 
 grade, the planets for a second time came into con- 
 junction, i.e. into their position of closest approach, 
 at the end of September. At that date, then, there 
 can be no doubt that the two planets must have pre- 
 sented averystriking spectacle, especiallythrough an 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 249 
 
 atmosphere which is reputed to be so clear as that 
 in the uplands of the East. Moreover, the planet 
 Jupiter was then at its most brilliant apparition, 
 for it was then at that part of its orbit relatively 
 to the earth when it would shine at its brightest. 
 Not far from it would be seen its duller and much 
 less conspicuous companion, Saturn. This glorious 
 astronomical spectacle continued almost unaltered 
 for several days, after which the planets slowly 
 separated again, then came to a halt, when, by 
 resuming once more a direct motion, Jupiter/*^;' a 
 third time approached to a conjunction with 
 Saturn just as the Magi may be supposed to have 
 entered the Holy City. To complete the fascina- 
 tion and the suggestiveness of the tale, about an 
 hour and a half after sunset the two planets would 
 have been seen hanging, as it were, in the meridian, 
 and suspended in the skies in the direction of 
 Bethlehem in the distance. These celestial pheno- 
 mena, thus described, do assuredly, on the first 
 impression, appear to fulfil the conditions of the 
 " Star of the Magi." 
 
 The first circumstance which created in my own 
 mind a suspicion to the contrary, arose from an 
 exaggeration, unaccountable for any man having a 
 claim to be ranked among astronomers, on the part 
 of Dr. Ideler himself, who described the two planets 
 as presenting the appearance of a single bright but 
 
250 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 diffused light, to persons having weak eyes. " So 
 dass fiir ein schwaches Auge der eine Planet fast 
 in den Zerstreuungskreis des Andern trat, mithin 
 beide als ein einziger Stern erscheinen konnten " 
 (p. 407, vol. ii.) Not only is this imperfect eye- 
 sight gratuitously inflicted on the Magi, but it 
 is quite certain that had they possessed any eye- 
 sight at all, they could not have failed to see, 
 not a single star, but two planets at the very 
 sensible and considerable distance of double the 
 apparent diameter of the moon. Had they been 
 even twenty times closer, the duplicity of the two 
 luminaries must have been apparent ; Saturn rather 
 confusing than adding to the brilliance of his 
 companion. 
 
 This forced blending of the two lights into one by 
 Ideler was, strange to say, still further exaggerated 
 by Dean Alford in the first edition of his Greek 
 Testament, who indeed restores ordinary sight to 
 the Magi, but, en revancJic, represents the two 
 planets, thus in reality separated by a space 
 occupied by two moons' diameters in the skies, 
 as a single star of surpassi^ig brightness ! Exag- 
 geration of this description, both on the part of 
 the Astronomer and the Theologian, induced the 
 writer of this Essay to undertake the formidable 
 task of calculating afresh an Ephemeris of Jupiter, 
 Saturn, and the sun from May to December 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 251 
 
 B.C. 7. The result of the investigations was to 
 confirm generally the facts of the three conjunc- 
 tions during the year, though somewhat to modify 
 the dates assigned by Dr. Ideler. Similar results 
 also have been arrived at by Encke, and the 
 December conjunction has been verified by the 
 late Astronomer- Royal, Sir George Airy, and 
 perhaps no astronomical phenomena of ancient 
 date are so certainly and definitely ascertained as 
 the conjunctions in question. 
 
 The next stage in the investigation is to 
 inquire how far, independently of the comparatively 
 wide separation of the two planets when at the 
 closest, their conjunction fulfils in other respects 
 the conditions of the narrative, though it is hard 
 to avoid a feeling of regret at the dissipation of 
 so fascinating an illusion ; but we are in quest of 
 the truth, rather than of a picture, however 
 beautiful. 
 
 And, first of all, the writer must confess himself 
 profoundly ignorant of any system of astrology ; 
 but supposing that some system did exist, it 
 nevertheless is inconceivable that on astrological 
 c^rounds alone, men could be induced to take so 
 formidable a journey of so long a duration. And 
 then, as to the widely spread and prevalent 
 expectation of some powerful personage about to 
 present himself in the East, the fact of its existence 
 
252 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 is referred to by the unimpeachable testimony of 
 Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. But it ought 
 to be very carefully observed that all these writers 
 concur in referring this expectation to the advent 
 of Vespasian in A.D. 69, which date was seventy- 
 five years, or two generations, after the visit of the 
 Magi. The well-known and oft quoted words of 
 Tacitus are "Eo ipso tempore," viz. A.D. 69 ; of 
 Suetonius " Eo tempore " ; and of Josephus " Kara 
 Tov KaLpov eKetvov," all pointing to A.D. 69 and 
 not to B.C. 7. Seeing, then, that these writers 
 refer to no general uneasy expectation as prevail- 
 ing in B.C. 7, it can have formed no reason for the 
 departure of the Magi, unless indeed the rumour 
 had been persistent through seventy-five years ; in 
 which case the " Eo ipso tempore " of Tacitus 
 would be hard to explain. Furthermore, it is 
 quite certain that in B.C. 66 (Pritchard, Travis. R. 
 A St. Soc.y vol. XXV.) a conjunction of Jupiter and 
 Saturn occurred in the constellation Pisces, closer 
 than the one on 4th December B.C. 7. If, therefore, 
 astrological considerations alone impelled the Magi 
 to journey to Jerusalem in the latter instance (B.C. 7), 
 similar considerations would have impelled their 
 fathers to take the same journey fifty-nine years 
 before ; and if it is conceivable that a knowledge 
 of the obscure prophecy of Balaam operated on 
 their minds, then there is no reason why the con- 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 253 
 
 junction phenomena which recurred every fifty-nine 
 years should not have caused periodical journeys 
 at similar intervals of time ! 
 
 But even supposing that the Magi did under- 
 take this journey at the time in question, it seems 
 impossible that the conjunction of December B.C. 
 7 can on any reasonable grounds be considered as 
 fulfilling the conditions in St. Matthew. The 
 circumstances are as follows : on or close to 4th 
 December the sun set at Jerusalem about 5 p.m. 
 Supposing the Magi to have then (or soon after) 
 commenced their journey to Bethlehem, they 
 would first see Jupiter and his dull companion one 
 and a half hour's distant from the meridian in a S.E. 
 direction and decidedly to the E. of Bethlehem, 
 which village is distant from Jerusalem by about 
 a two hours' journey almost in a southerly direction 
 By the time they came to Rachel's Tomb (see 
 Robinson's Bib. Res., xi. 588) the planets would 
 be due south of them, on the meridian, and no 
 longer over the Hill of Bethlehem, for as seen 
 from Rachel's Tomb that hill bears S. i 3° E. The 
 road then takes a turn to the east, and ascending 
 the hill, terminates near to its western extremity 
 (see the maps of Van de Velde, or of the Palestine 
 Exploration Fund). The planets would then be 
 on their right hand and a little behind them as 
 they entered the village ; the " star," therefore, 
 
254 THE STAR OF THE MAGI 
 
 would cease altogether to go before them as a 
 guide, and the case would be worse if they left 
 the Jaffa gate at a later hour. Moreover, once on 
 the hill, even if the star were not behind them as 
 they proceeded along the village, it would be 
 physically impossible for it to stand ovej' any house 
 whatever close to them, seeing that it would now 
 be visible far away from the hill, on the side 
 beyond it towards the west and the south, at an 
 elevation of about 50° or more. As they 
 advanced, the star would of necessity recede 
 towards the west, and under no circumstances 
 could be said even to appear to be over any house 
 not distant by many miles from the place where 
 they were. Thus the two heavenly bodies alto- 
 gether fail to fulfil either of the conditions implied 
 in the words " went before them " ((hSrjyev avrovs:), 
 or " stood over the house where the young child 
 was " (eaTaOri eTrdvco), and the beautiful phantasm 
 of Kepler and Ideler, which has fascinated so 
 many minds, vanishes before the light of an 
 astronomical examination. 
 
 What has heretofore been said in relation to a 
 conjunction of the planets applies with equal 
 force to any other celestial phenomenon with 
 which astronomers are acquainted. As for stars, 
 comets, and temporary stars, they are all so 
 exceedingly distant from our earth that, although 
 
THE STAR OF THE MAGI 255 
 
 they may by their direction guide, for a time, a 
 traveller towards a distant object, nevertheless, as 
 that object is approached, the star will have 
 receded far away in the distance beyond ; and if 
 the star be vertical in the skies, or nearly so, it 
 will appear to be equally over every object in the 
 neighbourhood. Nor will any meteoric pheno- 
 mena within scientific cognisance fulfil the con- 
 ditions of the sacred narrative, for all such bodies 
 are swift in their motions and transient in their 
 duration. There remains, therefore, but one 
 solution of the apparition of the Star of Beth- 
 lehem, and that solution does not lie within the 
 category of ordinary astronomical or meteoro- 
 logical phenomena. In its nature and origin it 
 must have been essentially supernatural and 
 divinely appointed to fulfil its mission. It shone 
 as a beacon and a diadem of glory over the lowly 
 chamber where the young child was. 
 
XI 
 THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 From the Guardian of Februaiy loth, 1886. 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 The unexpected appearance of men so eminent 
 as an ex -Premier, a President of the Royal 
 Society, and an Oxford Professor of Hebrew, as 
 controversialists in respect of the meaning of the 
 sublime Proem of Genesis is not only a remark- 
 able phenomenon, but a sure indication that no 
 satisfactory solution of the difficulties in question 
 had hitherto been suggested. Of the latter fact I 
 (and, no doubt, others besides myself) have been 
 lone convinced ; but as very many of my theo- 
 logical colleagues appeared to think otherwise, 1 
 judged that it was wiser not to interfere with 
 a peaceful fallacy, and to let the subject sleep. 
 
 The case is now altered, and I propose to lay 
 before those who care to read them such considera- 
 tions as have occurred to, and have entirely 
 satisfied, my own mind, after meditations on the 
 questions at issue, extending at intervals now 
 through half a century. Perhaps also the oppor- 
 
26o THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 tunities which have, in natural sequence, presented 
 themselves during a long professional career both 
 as a divine and as a student and expositor of 
 Nature, may furnish a sufficient reason why I should 
 now speak, and possibly receive some audience. 
 In what I am about to say I desire to use great 
 plainness of speech, and I hope also simplicity and 
 sincerity in the mode of inquiry for truth. I shall 
 aim at introducing wo finesse or economies into the 
 argument, but I will take the wonderful poem, for 
 poem it is in a sublime sense, in its literal and 
 grammatical and apparent meaning, such as it may 
 be presumed a plain man on reading it would 
 understand it to be. 
 
 Taken, then, in this plain and grammatical 
 sense, this majestic Proem, if regarded as an 
 account of creation in fact, contains statements 
 which, to my apprehension, are irreconcilable with 
 what we at present know of the constitution of 
 Nature, and there is offered no appreciable hope, 
 that I can discern, of a reconciliation from future 
 discoveries. I limit this statement to my own 
 mind and my own apprehension alone : if other 
 divines, other astronomers, other naturalists think 
 otherwise, I can only bow to their sincerity and 
 look to them for a candid interpretation of my 
 want of insight. 
 
 There is, indeed, a frame of mind, enviable and 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 261 
 
 worthy to be attained, which accepts all that is in 
 the sacred Scriptures with a simple and a childlike 
 faith, accepting it as the Word of God, and striving 
 to keep it, and to love it, and to obey it all with- 
 out question, and making no inquiry beyond the 
 seeking whether it is written. They who attain 
 to such a frame of mind I firmly believe accept the 
 Bible in one of the senses in which it has been 
 given to man : — 
 
 " Self questioned where it does not understand, 
 And with a superstitious eye of love." 
 
 There is, however, another spirit, equally noble, 
 for another class of men ; that spirit which in all 
 reverence strives for a reason for the hope that is 
 in us, and in humility inquires whether the things 
 alleged are true and really meant. I trust it is in 
 this spirit that I have pursued the present inquiry, 
 and now present the results of it for the considera- 
 tion of the thoughtful in the Christian Church, and 
 to others also who are on conscientious grounds 
 outside its pale ; and although I give what I 
 regard as unimpeachable reasons why I cannot 
 accept the Proem as being, or even as intended to 
 be, an exact and scientific account of creation, 
 nevertheless I shall also state why I am satisfied 
 that it had originally a different intention and a 
 far higher scope, and moreover contains within it 
 elements of that same sort of superhuman aid or 
 
262 THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 superintendence which is generally understood by 
 the undefined term of inspiration. 
 
 That it could not originally have been intended 
 to give a scientific account of creation in its precise 
 order, or method, or limitation of time, I am con- 
 vinced when I read of (i) the existence of waters 
 before the appearance of the sun ; (2) the clothing 
 of the earth with fruit-trees and grass, each bearing 
 its fruit, before the creation of the sun ; (3) the 
 successive orders or stages of creation occupying 
 each one single day. 
 
 There are also other difficulties regarding 
 palaeontological morphology, on which I forbear to 
 speak ; it is enough for me that a man of Dr. 
 Huxley's responsibility and deep knowledge of the 
 subject and general fairness of mind states 
 distinctly that the Mosaic account therein, as he 
 interprets it, is at variance with the facts of Nature 
 so far as is at present known. Further, it will be 
 observed that I interpret the period of time, 
 expressed again and again by the words, " There 
 was evening, there was morning, one day," in the 
 sense in which any plain man would understand 
 them — namely, as being intended to represent the 
 interval of time ordinarily represented by twenty- 
 four hours. Moreover, I am unable sincerely to 
 avail myself of what, with some tinge of irony. Dr. 
 Huxley calls the flexibility of the Hebrezv language, 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 263 
 
 and draw fine distinctions between the words 
 " made " and " created," as if the document were that 
 of a lawyer, or a glossary of scientific definitions. 
 To all intents and purposes there is a representation 
 of the creation of the sun and moon, after the 
 representation of that of the fruit-bearing trees and 
 the grass. There is also a distinct representation 
 of each of these creations occupying a space of 
 time limited by evening and morning, one day. 
 These three representations (including that 
 respecting the pre-existence of water), if intended 
 to be a statement of fact, are, to my apprehension, 
 in direct antagonism with our present knowledge 
 of Nature and the operations therein. 
 
 Nevertheless, and in the face of these to me 
 insurmountable difficulties, I feel as fully convinced 
 also of the existence of a superhuman element 
 running throughout the Proem from its beginning 
 to its end. It is not, and it cannot be, simply a 
 mere tradition from antecedent generations. For 
 the record in Genesis is siii generis in the world's 
 history ; in all the annals of literature there is 
 nothing that approaches it ; not all the poets and 
 philosophers that have ever lived could have com- 
 bined their genius to compose the like of it in its 
 succinctness, its concinity, its majesty. The myths 
 of Plato on the origin and destiny of things, 
 wonderful as they are for their exquisite beauty, 
 
264 THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 are utter childish babble when placed by the side 
 of the Mosaic Proem. All other cosmosfonies 
 add grossness to infantine senility. 
 
 What, then, are we to say of these two ap- 
 parently antagonistic elements contained in the 
 same narrative, one of which is contradictory to 
 the facts of Nature, so far as we know them, and 
 the other introduces therein the suggestion of a 
 superhuman element, implying more or less of 
 Divine aid or control ? For my own part, I fail 
 to see any inconsistency here, which I do not also 
 see, in kind at least, repeated throughout the 
 entire scheme of Providence, whether as revealed 
 in the Scriptures or as observed in Nature. For 
 the Eternal Father unquestionably does teach His 
 children at sundry times, in multifarious manners. 
 Moreover, things are so constituted that the 
 whole truth, in its absoluteness, is never taught 
 and is never attained : the light is sufficient for 
 the day, and often for that day only ; and more 
 light is generally attainable by a more diligent 
 and skilful use of existing faculties and natural 
 endowments. Further still, the object of the 
 Proem seems to be to impress on a rude and 
 primeval age, in a clear and emphatic manner, 
 the Fatherhood of God over the whole creation ; 
 but its object was not to teach the order, the 
 method, or the times in which that creation pro- 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 265 
 
 ceeded. Accordingly, a series of pictures is 
 presented to the mind, in each of which some 
 portions of the Divine creative power are suc- 
 cessively displayed, in respect of the sun, or the 
 moon, or the earth with its varied populations, on 
 the land, or in the air, or in the waters. But it is 
 a matter of entire indifference in what precise 
 order the creative energy is depicted ; and, as a 
 matter of fact, we find that order does occur 
 which is best suited to impress the emotions and 
 the intelligence of the mind. I hold that the 
 distinction implied in this remark is of supreme 
 importance, as removing all objections drawn from 
 the fact that the order of the creations detailed 
 in the Proem is not the order of natural fact. 
 
 Again, if we seek for the origin of this sublime 
 Proem, it seems natural to assign it, as many 
 writers have assigned it, to some ancient tradition 
 handed down from previous generations, until, 
 like the poems of Homer, it became committed to 
 writing. But in this case, where lay the original 
 source of the tradition itself? That source, I 
 hold, as I have already stated, could not have 
 been entirely human ; for, as we have also seen, 
 experience and history have taught us that nothing 
 like it, in respect of sublimity of conception, and 
 gravity of diction, and perspicuity of statement, has 
 appeared among the nations of the earth since the 
 
266 THE CREA TION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 remote age of its first appearance up to the time 
 when the philosophical astronomer of Slough 
 constructed his wonderful instruments and applied 
 his genius to the scrutiny of the heavens, so 
 pregnant and so suggestive. 
 
 But if the Proem be not entirely of human 
 origin, we are then to ask in what way it is alleged 
 or supposed that this superhuman aid was accorded 
 to the mind of a man. Now, without entering 
 upon the profound or inscrutable question as to 
 the mode or extent of what we term divine in- 
 spiration, a mere cursory search into the sacred 
 record soon discloses that the general agency is 
 recorded to have been through visions in the 
 night, or a trance by day. It is true that no such 
 origin is actually assigned in the sacred record to 
 the Proem in question ; on the contrary, it is 
 introduced without a preface, and with a majestic 
 abruptness, befitting (as it seems to me) what 
 professes to be the commencement of God's written 
 word to man. Independently of this, omissions 
 of matter, subsequently appearing to be of im- 
 portance, are of constant occurrence in Scripture. 
 We may therefore, I contend, assume the same 
 sort of origin to this beginning of Genesis, which 
 in so many other instances is stated to have been 
 the mode of communication between man and 
 the powers unseen, even the Spirit of God, divid- 
 
THE CREA TION PROEM OF GENESIS 267 
 
 ing unto every man severally as He will, and as 
 the occasion serves. We may assume (without 
 violation of probability) that in some remote stage 
 of the world's history, remote beyond our know- 
 ledge, some holy seer, a man of God, after long 
 and reverential pondering on the things around 
 him, animate and inanimate, and on his own exist- 
 ence, fell asleep, either in the gloom of evening or 
 in the light of noon-day, and in his sleep visions of 
 creative processes passed before him. In his waking 
 hours of meditation, something akin to what is 
 now disclosed in the vision may have gradually 
 dawned with uncertain light on his imagination ; 
 but now a Power not his own has reduced it to 
 an order more defined, and a conception more 
 distinct. It is not, indeed, a complete panorama 
 of the creation of things animate and inanimate, 
 in its pure and absolute sense, that moves before 
 the vision of his mind; but there are vivid 
 pictures or parables of creation, enacted like the 
 scenes of a drama before him ; parables of the crea- 
 tion of what, in his wakeful hours, had excited his 
 admiration, and such as when the vision was over 
 he could remember and recount. Better than all, 
 the creations were represented as the work of Him 
 who was the God of his family and of his nation, 
 and who had commanded him to love Him with 
 all his heart. 
 
268 THE CREA TION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 And SO, in the dreaming mind of the ancient 
 seer, it may be in that undefined and darkhng 
 way wherewith in our dreams we rather perceive 
 than see, chaos is present : an unformed earth 
 plunged undefinedly in many waters, dark and 
 deep. In his dream, and with the hearing of the 
 mind, he heard a Divine Voice, speaking with 
 a subHme authority, unknown before or since to 
 man, " Let there be Hght "; and he now sees chaos 
 and the waters which he had only heard or half- 
 conjectured before : but as yet there is no blaze 
 of the noontide light. And there the first scene 
 of the creation drama closes. To his sleepino- 
 thoughts there had passed "an evening and a 
 morning, one day." 
 
 Again the vision of the birth of things created 
 is resumed, and he perceives an awful separation 
 of the waters from each other at the bidding of 
 the Divine Word. Part of these pass off beyond 
 the firmament of heaven, now formed and disclosed 
 at that same command, and part of them remain 
 below. To the dreamer there has been again " an 
 evening and a morning, a second day." 
 
 During the like limitations of a third day the 
 earth emerges from the waters, continents and 
 seas are arranged, and the new-born earth is clad 
 with the trees of the forest and of the orchard, 
 and the fields are arrayed in their mantles of 
 
THE CREA TION PROEM OF GEAES/S 269 
 
 grass. These all, like the other things created, 
 are blessed of God. As yet there had been no 
 shadows flitting amidst the forests or reposing on 
 hill and glade, such as he was wont to see at 
 noontide or at the wane of day, for all as yet had 
 been seen by a diffused and unconcentrated light. 
 But now that the earth is arranged in its continents, 
 and seas, and hills, and plains, and clothed in its 
 glorious array of fruit-trees, bearing their fruit and 
 their seeds each after its kind, then, and not till 
 then, the sun in its majesty breaks forth and 
 sheds its living light resplendent over the fair 
 earth on the birthday of its completion. The 
 shadows from cloud and hill and tree now vary 
 the scene, and add new beauty as the day declines. 
 In the evening there is the moon, and there are 
 " the stars also," all created and blessed by the 
 God of his fathers. And so ends the creation 
 drama of the fourth day. 
 
 On the fifth and sixth days the creation vision 
 presents to the seer's mind a succession of pictures, 
 which, after the lapse of many centuries, were 
 embodied by the Hebrew Psalmist in almost 
 matchless poetry, and have ever since become a 
 great possession to devout men in the Church of 
 God. The new-clad earth no longer remains 
 tenantless by life, but " among the cedars of 
 Lebanon the fowls of the heaven have made their 
 
270 THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 
 
 nests, and sing among the branches " ; " the high 
 mountains are for the wild goats, and the rocks 
 are a refuge for the conies." " By the sides of 
 the streams the wild asses quench their thirst. 
 Yonder is the sea, great and wide, wherein are 
 things creeping innumerable, both small and 
 great, the leviathan whom God hath formed to 
 take his pastime therein." " These all wait upon 
 God," and God pronounced them good. So sang 
 the Psalmist, taking up his parable from the 
 creation poem, sublimer even than his own. 
 Meanwhile, on the sixth day, when all this fair 
 creation is completed, where is he, its future lord 
 and master, for whom all this wonderful array of 
 life and beauty was called into being ? And so 
 the seer, in his trance, hears the voice which he 
 recognises as the voice of God, " Let US make 
 MAN," and the man comes forth before the 
 prophet's gaze, fashioned as nought else that lives 
 besides, even as in the image of Him who created 
 him. If we seek to realise the scene, can we 
 doubt in what guise the new-formed man ap- 
 peared ? Surely erect, and in the attitude of 
 prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving. And he, 
 too, is blessed of God and pronounced to be 
 "very good." Did the seer, in his dream, then 
 also realise the picture so touchingly drawn by 
 the Psalmist, even that the man "went forth to 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 271 
 
 his work and to his labour until the evening " ? 
 Who shall say ? With this vision of the new-formed 
 man the scenes of creation close ; and " there was 
 evening, and there was morning, the sixth day." 
 
 One day still remains, a day of rest, a peaceful 
 Sabbath calm, for " the heaven and the earth 
 were finished, and all the host of them." Was 
 it on that visionary Sabbath morn that, as in the 
 ancient tradition preserved in Job, but omitted in 
 Genesis, " the morning stars sang together, and all 
 the sons of God shouted for joy " ? If so, then 
 there is here the sublime picture of the first 
 consecration of a day, which henceforth has 
 become a day of days, a season of blessedness 
 for man : THE SABBATH. 
 
 If such, or at all approaching such, were the 
 visions of creation, and if amid such joy the 
 entranced seer awoke from his dream, it could 
 not well be otherwise than that the favoured saint 
 would call his friends and his neighbours together, 
 and sitting under his vine, or in the shade of his 
 olive or his fig tree, he would recount his wonderful 
 dream again and again, and still again. Mean- 
 while the tale itself, after the manner of the East, 
 would speed its rapid way from city to city, until 
 at length the vision, as such, lost its name, and it 
 became a tradition. Was this the divine tradition 
 with which Moses began the Pentateuch ? 
 
272 THE CREA TION PROEM OF GEiYESIS 
 
 This, then, is the aspect under which I view 
 the majestic Proem of the Book of Genesis. To 
 me the interpretation wears the appearance of so 
 much probabiHty that I accept it as an approxi- 
 mate fact To my mind it provides a key which 
 fits and opens many of the locks of modern 
 controversy. Both as an astronomer and a divine, 
 musing on a difficult question now for half a 
 century, it satisfies my mind, and it sets me free. 
 Under this solution a man may be loyal to his 
 faith in the sacred Scriptures, and faithful also in 
 a fearless and ingenuous search for truth. Questions 
 of development, and of protoplasm, and of the sur- 
 vival of the strongest, have no real place for 
 contention in sight of this sacred panorama of the 
 visions of creation. It bears no true and real 
 relation to any vexatious doubts as to the priority 
 of palaeozoic or cainozoic populations. The astro- 
 nomer is left in peace to take his prism, and 
 scrutinise the materials of distant suns, and the 
 genesis, it may be, of new worlds ; and the 
 naturalist is free to take his still more marvellous 
 lens, prisms only in another form, and search for 
 the hidden seat of the mechanism of the emotions ; 
 all this, and more than this, he may do, without 
 the possibility of a conflict with the sacred record. 
 The duty both of the Astronomer and of the 
 Naturalist is the same, it is the search for truth 
 
THE CREATION PROEM OF GENESIS 273 
 
 in Nature. The duty of the Theologian is to 
 search for truth of another order, in regions which 
 may be collateral, but can never be conflicting. 
 
 It is, as I have said, after this fashion and in 
 this view that my own mind is set at rest, and as 
 such I offer it to the consideration of the Church 
 of God, and specially to any member thereof 
 whose faith is herein put to trial ; nevertheless, 
 
 " Si quid novisti rectius istis, 
 Candidus imperti ; si non, his utere mecum." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
MR. MURRAY'S 
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