28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



To the mathematician the mechanics of the heavens are in no way dif- 

 ferent from the mechanics of a clock. It is true that the clock must 

 have had a maker ; but the mathematician, who investigates any prob- 

 lem connected with its mechanism, has nothing to do with him as such. 

 The spring, the wheels, the escapement, and the rest of the works are 

 all in their proper places somehow, and it matters nothing to the mathe- 

 matician how they came there. As a mathematician the investigator 

 of clock-motion takes no account of the existence of clockmakers ; but 

 he does not deny their existence ; he has no hostile feeling toward 

 them ; he may be on the very best of terms with many of them ; it 

 may be at the request of one of them who has invented some new 

 movement that he has undertaken his investigations. Precisely in the 

 same way the man who investigates the mechanics of the heavens finds 

 a complicated system of motion, a number of bodies mutually attract- 

 ing each other and moving according to certain assumed laws. In 

 working out the results of his assumed laws, the mathematician has 

 no reason to consider how the bodies came to be as they are ; that they 

 are as they are is not only enough for him, but it would be utterly be- 

 yond his province to inquire how they came so to be. Therefore, so 

 far as his investigations are concerned, there is no God ; or, to use the 

 word above suggested, his investigations are atheous. But they are 

 not atheistic y and he may carry on his work, not merely without fear- 

 ing the Psalmist's condemnation of the fool, but with the full per- 

 suasion that the results of his labors will tend to the honor and glory 

 of God." * 



The thought contained in this paragraph, and which may be said to 

 be compressed in the word atheous, appears to me to be interesting 

 intellectually, and valuable morally. It is not desirable that the re- 

 proach of atheism should be thrown about rashly. That there is such 

 a thing as atheism, and that the atheistic condition of mind may be 

 not only a very miserable, but also a very immoral one, I would not 

 venture to deny ; but that charges of atheism are not unfrequently 

 rashly made, and the attitude taken up by scientific investigators is 

 sometimes regarded as atheistic when it is not fairly to be described 

 by that terrible epithet, is also true. Physical science is not more 

 essentially atheistic than arithmetical or geometrical : all three are 

 atheous, not one is atheistic. 



Yet God and nature are very close the one to the other : the natura 

 naturans and the natura naturata must necessarily be contiguous. We 

 need a " scientific frontier " between them, a line which shall on no 

 condition be transgressed by those who occupy the territory on one 

 side or the other. 



The necessity of keeping this frontier line sacred is perhaps not 

 sufficiently recognized, and there is a great tendency to transgress it ; 

 but it is not a mere arbitrary line to be laid down by treaty, as the 

 * " Oxford and Cambridge Sermons," p. 280. (George Bell & Sons.) 



