264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his son-in-law, Professor Dana, in that of Geology and Mineralogy. 

 The name of Silliinan was given to both chairs. 



Professor Silliman was still to continue a prominent figure before 

 the public, kept so by other events than those connected with science 

 and the affairs of the college. A few months after his resignation the 

 Kansas-Nebraska controversy rose to its height, and the Republican 

 party was born amid the convulsions it excited. Professor Silliman 

 had always abhorred slavery, and he saw in these disputes great moral 

 issues, and the question of the equal rights of citizens of all the States 

 to settle in the Territories and defend themselves there. His active 

 interest in these matters, and the works by which he showed it, called 

 out bitter partisan reprobation, and this in turn invoked eloquent and 

 deserved eulogies of his pure character and his attainments in science 

 from Senators Foster and Dixon in the United States Senate. 



Professor Silliman kept even pace with the progress of science and 

 scientific ideas as they were developed through all his career, and let 

 his religious faith shine at the same time with a light of even brilliancy. 

 The possibility that there was a conflict or could be a conflict does not 

 seem even to have occurred to him. From his earliest college-days, 

 piety and a firm devotion in religious faith seem to have formed a 

 prominent side of his character ; yet he never hesitated to accept the 

 most startling discovery, when it proved deserving acceptance. " Now, 

 at eighty-two and a half years of age," he says, March 1, 1862, " I can 

 truly declare that, in the study and exhibition of science to my pupils 

 and my fellow-men, I have never forgotten to give all the honor and 

 glory to the infinite Creator, happy if I might be the honored inter- 

 preter of a portion of Lis works, and of the beautiful structure and 

 beneficent laws discovered therein by the labors of many illustrious 

 predecessors. For this I claim no merit. It is the result to which 

 right reason and sound philosophy, as well as religion, would naturally 

 lead. While I have never concealed my convictions on these subjects, 

 nor hesitated to declare tbem on all proper occasions, I have also 

 declared my belief that while natural religion stands as the basis of 

 revelation, consisting as it does of the facts and laws which form the 

 domain of science, science has never revealed a system of mercy com- 

 mensurate with the moral wants of man. In Nature, in God's creation, 

 we discover only laws laws of undeviating strictness, and sure penal- 

 ties annexed for their violation. There is associated with natural laws 

 no system of mercy ; that dispensation is not revealed in Nature, and 

 is contained in the Scriptures alone. With the double view just pre- 

 sented, I feel that Science and Religion may walk hand in hand." " For 

 his own part," says Professor Fisher, from whose rich biography we 

 have drawn freely in the composition of this sketch, "he felt that the 

 Bible was a revelation from God. . . . Not being in the habit of 

 resorting to the Scriptures for information in physical science, he had 

 valued its early pages for the pure and sublime theism which they 



