39 



and self-torture declared that David had never so sweet a time 

 as when he was pursued like a partridge about the hedges by 

 his beautiful son, Absalom ; and when bear-baiting was prohi- 

 bited, not because of the pain it gave the bear, but of the pleas- 

 ure it gave the people. 



But those times have }>assed forever. Science took up 

 the cause of suffering humanity, and by familiarizing men 

 with the first of its laws, by familiarizing them with con- 

 ceptions of order and regularity in the operations of nature, 

 taught that God's work was too infinitely grand, too majesti- 

 cally perfect, to require His interference every day to keep the 

 system going, and that " every gratification of sense and of 

 intellect was justifiable which stopped short of injury to the 

 man or injury to others." 



But it is the second characteristic of science that we are 

 interested in more particularly — the unity of its laws, manifest- 

 ing itself in different forms and forces, which are all one, that 

 holds the destiny of the future. The fact is, the great future 

 which lies ahead of us is one grand unity of results ; and, in 

 words not original with me, this age is to go on growing better, 

 purer and faster, building schools, doubling its power of 

 machinery, trebling its exports of cotton and woolen goods, 

 and " sending forth its freights as missionaries of truth to all 

 lands," until by the homely influences of modern trade, which 

 laugh at the tinsel of ancient parade, by the interchange, if 

 you please, of tender courtesies between corn and cotton, by 

 the billing and cooing of account books, ledgers and bills of 

 exchange, by the electric whispers of telephonic messages, the 

 consummation of science is to be witnessed in the unification 

 of all things, in the destruction of theologies of narrow, bigoted 

 creeds, blood stained through the centuries, and in the knitting 

 together of all men in one religion breathing the pure spirit of 



