818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of hysterical emotions, that I for one should despair of any good re- 

 sult from investigating minutely these curious conquests effected by 

 pretentious physical marvels over the gaping intellectual credulity of 

 moral coldness and disbelief. 



Here the general discussion ended, but Dr. Ward, who had the 

 rifht of reply, exercised it with alertness and vigor. 



I can not understand, he said, Dr. Martineau's position, that be- 

 cause the best testimony which we have in modern times to the inter- 

 ference of Divine power in the chain of physical causation is more or 

 less mixed up with what he would regard as superstition and hysteri- 

 cal emotion, therefore it is perfectly justifiable to leave such matters 

 uninvestigated, and to pass by on the other side. Surely the whole 

 character of modern civilization would be altered if we could prove 

 satisfactorily for ordinary minds that the Divine will is a true cause, 

 which manifests itself habitually to those who humbly receive the Di- 

 vine revelations. Is not Dr. Newman's celebrated assertion that Eng- 

 land would be in a far more hopeful condition if it were far more 

 superstitious, more bigoted, more disposed to quail beneath the stings 

 of conscience, and to do penance for its sins, than it is, at least plau- 

 sible for one who, like Dr. Martineau, believes profoundly that the true 

 worship of a righteous will is the highest end of all human life ? Can 

 anything be more superabundantly evident, more conspicuously and, 

 so to say, oppressively clear, than that ninety-nine men out of every 

 hundred live as if God were at most nothing more than a remote prob- 

 ability, which it is hardly worth while to take into account in the or- 

 dinary routine of life ? Suppose, if you please, that the majority of 

 men by studying the Lourdes miracles will be brought, if they are 

 convinced at all, to burn an immense number of wax tapers to the 

 holy Virgin, and to dress up a number of very gaudy dolls in the 

 churches dedicated to her, by way of showing their gratitude to her 

 for curing paralytics and other miserable sufferers by the application 

 of Lourdes water. Is that so much more superstitious, after all, than 

 attributing similar cures to the transit of St. Peter's shadow, or to 

 handkerchiefs taken from St. Paul's body, as the author of the Acts 

 of the Apostles certainly did ? Nor, indeed, is it a matter of the very 

 highest moment whether people show their faith foolishly or whether 

 it overshoots the mark, and attributes imaginary effects to a real cause. 

 What is a matter of the highest moment is whether or not they feel 

 or do not feel their religious faith in every action of their life. If 

 God is really ruling you, is it not better to feel his eye upon you, even 

 though you show your sense of that vigilance unreasonably and foolish- 

 ly, than to live on very much as you would do, if, as Isaiah said, God 

 were on a journey or had gone to sleep ? Can any one deny that any 

 awakening, however rude its consequences, to the reality of Divine pow- 

 er, would be infinitely better than the rapidly growing habit of living 

 as if behind Nature there were no God ? I do not of course say this to 



