426 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



What are the conceptions in regard to which I jilace myself in the 

 position here indicated? The pope himself provides me with an an- 

 swer. In the Encyclical Letter of December, 1 864, his Holiness writes : 

 "In order that God may accede more easily to our and your prayers, 

 let us employ in all confidence, as our Mediatrix with Him, the Virgin 

 Mary, Mother of God, who sits as a Queen on the right hand of her 

 only-begotten Son, in a golden vestment, clothed around with various 

 adornments." 



In regard to this, as to other less pictorially anthropomorphic and 

 sartorial conceptions of the Supreme, I stand in an attitude of unbe- 

 lief; for, taken in connection with what is known of the extent, or- 

 ganization, and general behavior of this universe, they lack the con- 

 gruity necessary to commend them to me as truth. 



Soon after the delivery of the Belfast Address, the Protestant 

 Bishop of Manchester did me the honor of noticing it ; and, in refer- 

 ence to that notice, a brief and, I trust, not uncourteous remark was 

 introduced into my first preface. Since that time the bishop's refer- 

 ences to me have been very frequent. Assuredly this is to me an un- 

 expected honor. Still a doubt may fairly be entertained whether this 

 incessant speaking before public assemblies on emotional subjects does 

 not tend to disturb that equilibrium of head and heart which it is 

 always so desirable to preserve whether, by giving an injurious pre- 

 dominance to the feelings, it does not tend to swathe the intellect in 

 a warm haze, thus making the perception, and consequent rendering 

 of facts, indefinite, if not untrue. It was to the bishop I referred in 

 a recent brief discourse ' as " an able and, in many respects, a coura- 

 geous man, running to and fro upon the earth, and wringing his hands 

 over the threatened loss of his ideals." It is doubtless to this sorrow- 

 ing mood this partial and, I trust, temporary overthrow of the judg- 

 ment by the emotions that I must ascribe a probably unconscious, 

 but still grave, misrepresentation contained in the bishop's last refer- 

 ence to me. In the Times of November 9th, he is reported to have 

 expressed himself thus : "In his lecture in Manchester, Prof. Tyndall 

 as much as said that at Belfast he was not in his best mood, and that 

 his despondency passed away in brighter moments." Now, consider- 

 ing that a verbatim report of the lecture was at hand in the Manchester 

 Examiner, and that my own corrected edition of it was to be had for 

 a penny, the bishop, I submit, might have afforded to repeat what I 

 actually said, instead of what I " as much as said." I am sorry to 

 add that his rendering of my words is a vain imagination of his own. 

 In my lecture at Manchester there was no reference, expressed or im- 

 plied, to my moods in Belfast. 



To all earnest and honest minds acquainted with the paragraph of 



1 See The Popular Science Monthly for January, 1875. 



