311 



what seemed at one time a wild chaos of facts driven about at random by each 

 conflicting current of hj^othesis, there emerges at last that compact symmetry 

 and simplicity which we recognise at once as truth. What inward misgiving 

 is it that makes us distrust or despair of this result in Theology ? If we could 

 look back to the occurrence of the first great medieval discoveries in Geography, 

 in Astronomy, even in Literature, we should see convulsion of existing opinion, 

 processes of mental revolution, far greater, for many obvious causes, than any 

 which scientific discovery can cause to-day. Yet the p^xamid which seemed to 

 many, perhaps most thinkers of that day, to be tremblir>g on its point ready to 

 topple down upon the next generation, if not their own, still rests upon its base ; 

 and to the thinking of most, even of the timid of our day, a good deal more firmly 

 than it did, as it depended on man's previous opinions and creeds. The progress 

 of physical discovery knows no respite, nor pity, for the most persistent theological 

 opposition, any more than the blind forces of nature will pause in obedience to the 

 will of man. But in the progress of time he learns to harness to his own use the 

 very agencies at which his ignorance once trembled, and discovers that Creation 

 is in unison, not in opposition to his wants and happiness, and was framed to be 

 in subservient accordance with that of which it appeared to threaten the very 

 existence. 



A heathen wTiter tells us that the first Mariner was deemed guilty of impiety. 

 We know, from much more recent history, that the first man who used the 

 telescope, the first man who drew lightning from the clouds, nay, the first man 

 wbo dared to raise the wind artificially to winnow his wheat, was thought little 

 better than an atheist. But nobody now considers Christianity in danger from 

 Lord Rosse's ten-foot Reflector, from the Electric Telegraph, or from Hornsby's 

 Corn-Dressing Machine with its internal hurricane almost enough to blow a man's 

 head off. 



In this age, as well as in those before it, we mistake the discordance with 

 our own readings and opinions for opposition to Christian truth. We mistake 

 the ideas we have associated with our religious views, for religion itself. Time, 

 the greatest of revolutionists, insensibly corrects the error, and supplies the 

 reconciliation better than any argument. In matters of science it is far better to 

 keep the work separate at first, to let each investigator go on in his own track 

 undisturbed by perpetual challenge of disagreement with received opinions. 

 The Chinese foot does not become more symmetrical by the attempt to restrain 

 it within the shoe that fitted its infancy ; and the Study of Nature, if lef. un- 

 confined, will best preserve the symmetry of Truth while the proportions of human 

 Thought are enlarged. 



