278 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [zn. 



science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is 

 the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the 

 orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest 

 seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, 

 whose lives have been embittered and their good name 

 blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters ? Who 

 shall count the host of weaker men whose sense ol 

 truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonize 

 impossibilities — whose life has been wasted in the 

 attempt to force the generous new wine of Science 

 into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry 

 of the same strong party % 



It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their 

 cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theolo- 

 gians lie about the cradle of every science as the 

 strangled snakes beside that of Hercules ; and history 

 records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been 

 fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from 

 the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated ; 

 scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon 

 of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it 

 forget ; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid 

 to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first 

 chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end 

 of sound science ; and to visit, with such petty thunder- 

 bolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who 

 refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive 

 Judaism. 



Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggres- 

 sive tendencies. With eyes fixed on the noble goal to 

 which "per aspera et ardua ,J they tend, they may, now 

 and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the unneces- 

 sary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious, 

 encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path ; but 

 why should their souls be deeply vexed ? The majesty 



