THE CONQUEST OF SCIENCE. 239 



an almost unknown sea, defying with their fervid hearts the 

 freezing storms of winter, and the still more freezing storms of 

 man's bigotry and persecution, and planted popular right and 

 independent Christian worship in the New World, and gave 

 an immortal soul to the empire of human equality on this con- 

 tinent. In the world of thought Shakspeare performed his 

 divine and undying work. In the world of science, Harvey 

 discovered the circulation of the blood ; Drebel invented the 

 thermometer ; Torricelli invented the barometer ; and Kepler 

 erected as a monument to his genius, the " Astronomia nova 

 celeslis." It was the era of mental and moral protests and 

 assertions, from which our own great privileges and opportu- 

 nities have sprung. 



From that period, the struggle which science had so long 

 carried on against bigotry and intellectual arrogance, has been 

 conducted, with a spirit of "audacity and sobriety" worthy of 

 its great master, against the natural obstacles which lie in the 

 way of finite man, in his endeavors to comprehend and employ 

 the works of Infinite Wisdom. Once free, science has not been 

 disheartened in her career of usefulness and honor. What an 

 army of martyrs does she already present for the respect and 

 admiration of mankind ! Amidst the eternal snows of moun- 

 tain heights, in the awful solitudes that surround the poles, in 

 the smothering damps of unfathomable mines, scorched and 

 stricken down on the burning sands of the desert, poisoned by 

 miasmas, stifled by the fatal gases of the laboratory, wasted by 

 long toil over the intricate and wonderful structure of the 

 human body, the sons of science have bravely and nobly per- 

 ished, that man might be brought into more intimate relations 

 with that creation of which he has been made lord and master. 

 Clothed now with the heroism and self sacrifice which ennoble 

 every great and good cause in which man can engage, science 

 goes on from achievement to achievement, and will continue to 

 go on until she reaches that boundary which is drawn between 

 the human and the divine, and beyond which we " walk by 

 faith and not by sight." 



That this path lies before her, who can doubt ? In the 

 material world which lies all around us, in the earth on which 

 we tread, and from which we draw our very existence, are con- 

 stantly recurring phenomena, which have thus far seemed to 



