6 9 S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other, one would have supposed that they would have felt more the 

 charm and loveliness of the outward world, and have taken a greater 

 interest in discovering its unchangeable ordinances. Is it unreason- 

 able to refer much of this to that difference of religion which consti- 

 tutes the most striking distinction between the classic and the Chris- 

 tian world ? In tbe first place, the selfish isolation, the jealous indi- 

 vidualism of ancient life, gave no encouragement to that sense of 

 common interests among all mankind which is the justification of 

 the scientist's pecuniarily unprofitable labors. Among the Greeks, 

 while the feeling of devotion to the state, or rather city, was in- 

 tense, the sentiment of the general w r elfare or the cause of humanity 

 hardly existed. It was only with the advent of Christianity that the 

 idea of mankind as one great family, each one of whom must labor 

 for all the rest, came in. This idea has been the nurse, not only of 

 modern civil freedom, but of modern science. " Not till the word 

 barbarian was struck out of the dictionary of mankind," says Max 

 Muller, in his "Lectures on the Science of Language," "not till the 

 riodit of all nations of the world to be classed as members of one 

 genus or kind was recognized, can we look even for the first begin- 

 ning of our science. This change was effected by Christianity." 



The grand thought that accompanied this sense of human broth- 

 erhood, forming the other pole of gospel truth, viz., the belief in one 

 God and Father of men, gave an equal contribution toward supplying 

 the intellectual soil needed for the prosperous growth of science. 

 With the multitude of national and local gods, and even tribal or 

 family divinities, which prevailed in the classic world, the minds of 

 men were constantly diverted from that unity that is the scarlet 

 thread in every royal cable of science. But monotheism, establishing 

 unity in the divine realm, gave unity also to the order of Nature. 

 While surrounding nations looked upon Nature in dread, and in blind 

 superstition sacrificed their own little ones to the meteor or the vol- 

 cano, the Hebrew, tracing all things up to the power of the eternal 1 

 am, beside whom there is no other god, found in all the forces and 

 marvels of Nature fountains of good cheer and grateful praise. The 

 earth was " the Lord's and the fullness thereof." " Dragons and all 

 deeps, fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling his word 

 all these were to praise the name of the Lord. For he commanded 

 and they were created. He hath also established them forever and 

 ever; he hath made a decree which shall not be moved" (Psalm 

 cxlviii.). Christianity took up and diffused this grand view of the 

 relation of Nature to God and to man. Though the appreciation of 

 Nature's beauty, order, and dignity, was swamped for a time by the 

 tide of Oriental asceticism, Grecian metaphysics, and transformed 

 polytheism, it rose gradually above it, and established itself firmly 

 in the mind of Christendom. It is this new interest in all the aspects, 

 changes, and laws of the material, vegetable, and animal realms, full as 



