SKETCH OF DR. JOSEPH FRAUNHOFER. 739 



scientific methods of thought, illustrated even with the aid of such 

 books as Jevons's "Principles of Science," can do much to enable the 

 young theologian to sufficiently appreciate the attitude of scientific 

 men. Laboratory work will only enable a man to perceive the true 

 scope and limit of science. This laboratory work cannot be under- 

 taken by the young divinity student unless he takes it during a col- 

 lege course, as it is possible to do at Harvard University. An ex- 

 tended scientific training appears to be an impossibility for a young 

 minister; and the most successful sermons seem to the writer, Avho is 

 both a member of a church and a lover of science, to be those in which 

 argument and logic are laid aside, and simple faith and enthusiasm 

 take their place. A minister cannot expect to meet a scientific man 

 on his own ground, in regard to the scope and bearing of his studies. 

 By his eloquence in denunciation of scientific radicalism he can only 

 hope to carry with him those who are ignorant, and who cling to old 

 traditions. With his present preliminary education a minister cannot 

 influence deep thinkers by any wealth of argument which he may 

 possess. He can only hope to do this by the great power of touching 

 human sympathies which the Bible gives him ; by dwelling on the 

 joys and sorrows of man's strange and brief career, and by picturing 

 that hereafter of purity which, we venture to say, no man, even the 

 most short-sighted scientific materialist, ever despairs of. 



-*- 



SKETCH OF DR. JOSEPH FRAUNHOFER. 1 



FEW things in the history of science are more interesting than 

 the examples it affords of men devoting themselves with pas- 

 sionate assiduity and untiring persistence to researches which the 

 investigator himself can neither turn to account nor are to be of 

 any ultimate use, and which the public regards as in the last de- 

 gree frivolous and futile, but the value of which is ultimately and 

 abundantly justified. A man works like a martyr at some obscure and 

 unknown subject, is laughed at and commiserated by his contempora- 

 ries, dies, and drops out of memory, until in after-times, in the turns of 

 thought, his results are suddenly invested with a grand interest, and 

 become a passport to their author's immortality. Something like this 

 was the fortune of the subject of the present sketch ; he w T orked in a 

 field wdiich nobody thought of the slightest moment, but he has linked 

 his name forever with one of the most brilliant discoveries of this 

 century. 



Joseph von Fraunhofer was born in Straubing, Bavaria, March 6, 

 1787, of humble parents, and w\as left an orphan in 1799, at the age 



1 Pronounced Frown' -ho-fcr. 



