8 



facts, stored in books, like a talent hid in a napkin. Applied to 

 the circumstances of life, science becomes the most potent of 

 all intellectual factors in promoting the wealth, comfort, and 

 happiness of humanity. So universal are its applications that 

 we are apt to forget how much we owe to science, because so 

 many of its wonderful gifts have become familiar parts of our 

 everyday life, and their very value makes us forget their origin. 



The infinite variety of methods of locomotion and communica- 

 tion ; the aids to the manufacture of every detail of food, clothing ; 

 the furniture of houses ; the development of arts and commerce ; 

 the preservation of health and the eradication of disease ; the 

 production of means for pleasure, recreation, education, and ten 

 thousand other things, are the direct results of scientific inven- 

 tion and discovery. If we take up the most unconsidered trifle 

 and trace its history, we shall be led back to some scientific basis, 

 the discovery of which was in itself a triumph. 



There is not a force in nature, nor scarcely a material 

 substance which we can employ which has not been the 

 subject of numerous original experimental researches, 

 many of which have resulted, in a greater or less degree, in 

 opening up fresh fields for employment and commercial nctivity. 

 Therefore, says Archdeacon Farrar, "in the achievements 

 of Science there is not only beauty and wonder, but also benefi- 

 cence and power. It is not only that she has revealed to us 

 infinite space crowded with unnumbered worlds ; infinite time 

 peopled by unnumbered existences ; infinite organisms, hitherto 

 invisible, but full of delicate and iridescent loveliness ; but also 

 that she has been, as a great Archangel of Mercy, devoting 

 herself to the service of man. She has laboured, her votaries 

 have laboured, not to increase the power of despots or add to 

 the magnificence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to 

 economise human effort, to extinguish human pain. 



On these and all other grounds I think (continues Farrar) that 

 none of our sons should grow up wholly ignorant of studies 

 which at once train the reason and fire the imagination, which 

 fashion as well as forge, which can feed as well as fill the 

 mind." 



From the consideration of the highest and noblest missions 

 of science, which have transformed the social and commercial 

 conditions of the life of the world, our thoughts are thus turned 

 to its effect upon the bulk of mankind as a means for opening 

 the mental eye to see and to ear to hear. Without its continual 

 aid, the individual mind, as well as the mind of the community, 

 would relapse into a condition of confused superstition, " in 

 wandering mazes lost." 



The ordinary mind, untrained in science, is, to a great 

 extent, the mind of a child. The child's mind is filled with 



