SELBORNE 295 



our researches into the wonderful works of creation 

 we are acting in obedience to a tacit command, or, 

 at all events in harmony with the Divine Will ? 



Ingenious ! would be my comment, and possibly 

 to the eighteenth century mind it would have proved 

 satisfactory. There was something to be said in 

 defence of what appeared to him as new and strange 

 in our books and methods. Not easily said, un- 

 fortunately ; since it was not only the expression that 

 was new, but the outlook, and something in the heart. 

 We are bound as much as ever to facts ; we seek for 

 them more and more dihgently, knowing that to 

 break from them is to be carried away by vain 

 imaginations. All the same, facts in themselves 

 are nothing to us : they are important only in their 

 relations to other facts and things — to all things, 

 and the essence of things, material and spiritual. 

 We are not like children gathering painted shells 

 and pebbles on a beach ; but, whether we know it 

 or not, are seeking after something beyond and 

 above knowledge. The wilderness in which we are 

 sojourners is not our home ; it is enough that its 

 herbs and roots and wild fruits nourish and give us 

 strength to go onward. Intellectual curiosity, with 

 the gratification of the individual for only purpose, 

 has no place in this scheme of things as we conceive 



