SCIENCE AND RELIGION AS ALLIES. 695 



ami strange event. Their best instruments have caught sight of no 

 devil, their deepest mining-shaft has reached no limbo of departed 

 souls. They have traced beforehand the path that the comet would 

 pursue, found the cause of the earthquake, the connection of disease 

 with its physical antecedents and antidotes. Spectres have been re- 

 duced to illusions of the visual organs, and lunacy to affections of the 

 cerebral lobes. The witches and imps of the old dispensation have 

 vanished before the light of modern knowledge like shadows of a 

 hideous niglit. Interruptions of the established order, whether by 

 wizard or holy exorcist ; special dispensations and interventions, 

 whether from the realm of diablerie or providence, are no longer 

 credited; but law, inflexible law, without the slightest slip or varia- 

 tion, is believed to reign always and everywhere. Lily and solar 

 system unfold according to one and the same formula. The hallucina- 

 tion of the senses, the insane delirium, these also have their natural 

 sources from which they flow in a regular order. Even in the excep- 

 tion lies hidden some deeper law. 



With such a strong and iconoclastic hand has Science plied the axe 

 in the domain of Faith. As every one knows, it has been exceedingly 

 painful to many pious souls. It is charged that these reconstructions 

 which modern inquiry have made and are making unsettle all the 

 foundations of religion ; that they strip off the bloom of mystery and 

 sacredness from the flowers of faith and conduct to irreverence. Are 

 they, in truth, to be deplored ? It seems to me that they are not, but 

 to be rejoiced at. It is true that they have given the death-blow to 

 many forms of faith. It is true that they have disabused us of many 

 ancient venerations. To-day, when we carry flame sealed in our vest- 

 pocket ready to come forth at the scratch of a match, no fire-deity, of 

 course, receives any longer the sacrifice of our first-born. To-day, 

 when we bottle up the lightning and make it our errand-boy, we no 

 longer revere it as the bolt of Jove. But for everything that Science 

 has taken away from Religion, she has given her something greater. If 

 she has weaned her of her blind awe of the unknown, she has substituted 

 a more rational awe of the known. If with ruthless hand she battles 

 down every baseless tradition and fond illusion, she consecrates with 

 religious veneration the simplest real fact. If Nature no longer is the 

 object of human dread, yet, as the useful storehouse whence we draw 

 food and treasure, as the friendly Titan who performs for us tasks 

 beyond our unassisted power, it holds a higher place. If the astrono- 

 mer's lens has dissipated the ancient heavens, it is to show us system 

 behind system of celestial bodies, blazing at immeasurable intervals 

 in the depths of illimitable space. If geology has taken away the 

 idea of a creation finished once for all in a certain six days of the year 

 b. c. 4004, it has given us instead a continual process of moulding 

 and perfecting carried on for 100,000,000 years. The rigorous prob- 

 ing that science has given to Nature does not remove any of its won- 



