660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



material world, science seems only to have made progress to humiliate 

 and to humble us ! 



Let us accept the lesson of humiliation, with a proper sense of rev- 

 erence ! But, while humbling ourselves in the presence of the over- 

 whelming vastness of God's creation, let us not degrade ourselves : let 

 us not imagine that so insignificant so ephemeral a being groping 

 about on so minute a speck in the universe is totally unworthy of a 

 Creator's care ; or entertain the debasing idea that there is no life no 

 hope beyond this transient state of existence ! Such a view is not 

 the legitimate result of the proper sense of humility which true science 

 demands. She teaches us that grand humility which annihilates self, 

 and places the soul as a child-like learner in the face of God's uni- 

 verse ! Like the sacred Shepherd, with unsandalled feet, we advance 

 with reverential awe upon the holy ground, and receive assurances 

 that our minute sphere is benignly noticed by the eye of Omniscience ; 

 that, amid the surrounding grandeur, man is not overlooked ! 



But let us not forget, that there is another aspect under which such 

 contemplations may be viewed, which is calculated to exalt man in 

 the scale of creation. When we reflect on the extreme feebleness of the 

 natural means by the help of which so many great problems have been 

 attacked and solved : if we ask ourselves how such results have been 

 attained ; how have we been enabled to assure ourselves of this stu- 

 pendous scale of creation of the resplendent glories of the illimitable 

 realms of space the feeble being resumes all his wonted dignity ! 

 By the side of such wonderful achievements of the mind, what signifies 

 the weakness and fragility of our body; what signifies the dimensions 

 of the planet our residence the grain of sand on which it has hap- 

 pened to us to appear for a few moments ! 



From this point of view, man is exalted to his true dignity, through 

 his spiritual and intellectual nature. A mind capable of accomplish- 

 ing such results must indeed be an emanation from Deity ! We 

 must have within us some feeble spark of Divinity ! Yes, there is 

 a life and a hope beyond and above this transient existence ! 



" 'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us, 

 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 

 And intimates Eternity to man." 



Yes, the lofty aspirations of humanity are not delusions ; they are 

 realities. They link us with a purer order of existence, which makes 

 us heirs of immortality. We repose under a confident and unwaver- 

 ing assurance that, in God's own time, these earth-mists will be dis- 

 persed, and the dim twilight of conjecture will yield to the glorious, 

 unclouded noonday of knowledge. The California Teacher Abstract 

 of a Lecture. 



