SCIENCE AND RELIGION AS ALLIES. 699 



much as the propounding of the Baconian method, that has so adorned 

 physical knowledge in these latter days ; and when we consider what 

 gave this new attraction to Nature, and shed over it a divine light, as 

 it were, we can find no other agency so conspicuous, so powerful, as 

 that of the two great religious dispensations, the record of which has 

 been preserved for us in the Old and New Testaments. One whose 

 name is among the very first on the rolls of science has given strong 

 and explicit testimony on this point. Alexander von Humboldt, in a 

 striking passage of his " Cosmos," sketching the intellectual phenom- 

 ena of this world, thus describes the state of the Hebrew mind as 

 distinguished from that exhibited among other portions of the human 

 family: "It is characteristic of the poetry of the Hebrews that, as a 

 reflex of monotheism, it always embraces the universe in its unity, 

 comprising both terrestrial life and the luminous realms of space. 

 The Hebrew poet does not depict Nature as a self-dependent object, 

 glorious in its individual beauty, but always as in relation and sub- 

 jection to a higher spiritual power. Nature is to him a work of 

 creation and order the living expression .of the omnipresence of the 

 Divinity in the visible world. Hence the lyrical poetry of the He- 

 brews, from the very nature of its subject, is grand and solemn, . . . 

 and develops a rich and animated conception of the life of Nature. 

 It might almost be said that one single psalm represents the image 

 of the whole cosmos. We are astonished to find in a lyric poem 

 of such limited compass the whole universe. . . . Similar views of 

 the cosmos occur repeatedly in the Psalms, and most fully, per- 

 haps, in the ancient if not ante-Mosaic book of Job." 



Thus did religious reverence among the Hebrews lead to the 

 notice and study of Nature. And, as to its influence on modern cult- 

 ure, let us listen again to the great philosopher of Berlin : " When 

 the feelings died away," he continues, " which had animated classical 

 antiquity and directed the minds of men rather to a visible manifes- 

 tation of human antiquity than to a passive contemplation of the 

 external world, a new spirit arose. Christianity gradually diffused 

 itself, and, wherever it was adopted as the religion of the state, it not 

 only exercised a beneficial condition on the lower classes by incul- 

 cating the social freedom of mankind, but also expanded the views of 

 men in their communion with Nature. The eye no longer rested on 

 the form of the Olympic gods. The Fathers of the Church, in their 

 rhetorically correct and often practically imaginative language, now 

 taught that the Creator showed himself great in inanimate Nature no 

 less than in animated Nature; and in the wild strife of the elements 

 no less than in the still activity of organic development. It was thus 

 the tendency of the Christian mind to prove from the order of the 

 universe and the beauty of Nature the greatness and goodness of the 

 Creator, and this tendency to glorify the Deity in his works gave rise 

 to a taste for natural observation." 



