ADDRESSES OE ELIOT AND MARSH. 475 



It has thus exalted the idea of God the greatest service which 

 can be rendered to humanity. "Each age must worship its own 

 thought of God," and each age may be judged by the worthiness of 

 that thought. In displaying the uniform, continuous action of unre- 

 penting Nature in its march from good to better, science has inevita- 

 bly directed the attention of men to the most glorious attributes of 

 that Divine intelligence which acts through Nature with the patience 

 of eternity and the fixity of all-foreseeing wisdom. Verily, the in- 

 finite, present Creator is worshiped in this place. A hundred life- 

 times ago a Hebrew seer gave utterance to one of the grandest 

 thoughts that ever mind of man conceived, but applied it only to his 

 own little nation, and coupled it with barbarous denunciation of that 

 nation's enemies. This thought, tender and consoling toward human 

 weakness and insignificance as a mother's embrace, but sublime also 

 as the starry heights and majestic as the onward sweep of ages, 

 science utters as the sum of all its teachings, as the supreme result 

 of all its searching and its meditation, and applies alike to the whole 

 universe and to its last atom " the eternal God is thy refuge, and 

 underneath are the everlasting arms." 



Address of Professor O. C. Marsh. 



The opening of this Museum to day is an important event in the 

 annals of American science, and one from which great results are sure 

 to follow. We see around us here, already, treasures of Nature from 

 every land, and representing all periods of the earth's history. Not 

 merely a few typical specimens, as in most new museums, but rich 

 series, illustrating the marvelous diversity of Nature, both in the 

 present and in the past. Such treasures, arranged with system, and 

 to the best advantage, as here, arrest the attention of every observer, 

 and invite study. This alone is a grand work accomplished, and yet, 

 we are told, this is but the beginning. 



The great museums of the world are in the great cities ; and it is 

 fitting that New York, one of the few great centres of culture, should 

 at last take her proper place in science, and found a museum, worthy 

 of herself, for the diffusion of knowledge among her citizens. But 

 there is something higher than the diffusion of knowledge to strive 

 for here, and that is the increase of knowledge. The old idea of a 

 museum was a show-room ; the modern idea makes it a workshop as 

 well. If this institution is to hold high rank in science, as we hope, 

 it will not be in consequence of the spacious halls before us, crowded 

 though they be with the rarest of Nature's products ; but, rather, it 

 will come through the small work-rooms in the attic, where the natu- 

 ralist, with microscope or scalpel, has patiently worked out discoveries 

 that add to the sum of human knowledge. This Museum will fail of 

 its highest good, fail even to achieve more than a local influence, un- 



