80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the earth was fixed, and that the sun and stars revolved round it daily, 

 was interwoven in a similar manner with religious feeling, the separa- 

 tion then attempted by Galileo arousing animosity and kindling per- 

 secution. Men still living can remember the indignation excited by 

 the first revelations of geology, regarding the age of the earth, the 

 association between chronology and religion being for the time indis- 

 soluble. In our day, however, the best-informed clergymen are pre- 

 pared to admit that our views of the Universe, and its Author, are not 

 impaired, but improved, by the abandonment of the Mosaic account 

 of the Creation. Look, finally, at the excitement caused by the pub- 

 lication of the " Origin of Species," and compare it with the calm attend- 

 ant on the appearance of the far more outspoken, and, from the old 

 point of view, more impious " Descent of Man." 



Thus religion survives after the removal of what had been long 

 considered essential to it. In our day the Antipodes are accepted, the 

 fixity of the earth is given up, the period of Creation and the reputed 

 age of the world are alike dissipated, Evolution is looked upon without 

 terror, and other changes have occurred in the same direction too 

 numerous to be dwelt upon here. In fact, from the earliest times to 

 the present, religion has been undergoing a process of purification, 

 freeing itself slowly and painfully from the physical errors which the 

 busy and uninformed intellect mingled with the aspiration of the soul, 

 and which ignorance sought to perpetuate. Some of us think a final 

 act of purification remains to be performed, while others oppose this 

 notion with the confidence and the warmth of ancient times. The 

 bone of contention at present is the physical value of prayer. It is 

 not my wish to excite surprise, much less to draw forth protest by the 

 employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any intelligent person 

 to look the problem honestly and steadily in the face, and then to say 

 whether, in the estimation of the great body of those who sincerely 

 resort to it, prayer does not, at all events upon special occasions, 

 invoke a Power which checks and augments the descent of rain, wdiicb 

 changes the force and direction of winds, which affects the growth of 

 corn, and the health of men and cattle a Power, in short, which, 

 when appealed to under pressing circumstances, produces the precise 

 effects caused by physical energy in the ordinary course of things. 

 To any person who deals sincerely with the subject, and refuses to 

 blur his moral vision by intellectual subtleties, this; I think, will 

 appear a true statement of the case. 



It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student, so far as 

 I represent him, has any wish to meddle with player. Forced upon 

 his attention as a form of physical energy, or as the equivalent of such 

 energy, he claims the right of subjecting it to those methods of ex- 

 amination from which all our present knowledge of the physical uni- 

 verse is derived. And, if his researches lead him to a conclusion adverse 

 to its claims if his inquiries rivet him still closer to the philosophy 



