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of tiny little waves passing every second through the coatings and 
humours of the eye without being felt, and then dashing them- 
selves against that delicate curtain at the back of the eyeball, 
where the fibres of the optic nerve spread themselves out amongst 
a film of delicate bloodvessels. This is just what happens every 
time you look at a red ribbon, a ripe strawberry, anything red. 
Look at the ribbon for one minute and multiply those billions by 
sixty to see how many waves have struck the retina. A higher 
rate of vibration gives consciousness of a different colour ; it takes 
the greatest number to produce violet, no less than 727 billions per 
second. No scientific man doubts this; it can be proved mathe- 
matically if you will take for granted the existence of the Ether. 
We know the size of the imagined waves of this imagined sub- 
stance, which no hnman eye has yet seen; in red light there are 
89,918 to the inch, in violet light 64,631. All space throughout 
the grand archway of the Heavens is filled with this Ether, vibrat- 
ing at these and other rates in every imaginable direction. Star- 
light is but ‘‘the transported shiver of bodies countless millions 
of miles distant, which translates itself in human consciousness as 
the splendour of the firmanent at night.’’ (Tyndall). 
Do these thoughts and figures seem to you impossible of accept- 
ance? ‘They are articles of the Scientific Creed, and as such we 
are bidden by the apostles of Science to accept them. You and I 
cannot possibly attempt, each for himself, to find out the probable 
truth or falsity of any of them. We must be content to accept 
them at the hands of those who are ‘‘ honourable men,’’ whom we 
can trust in these matters because they have made them the study 
of their lives. We are not expected to refuse belief because they 
are ditticult of comprehension. I ask then on behalf of those who 
cling to the Old Faith that they may be allowed to do that which 
every student of Nature and Science is expected to do,—to trust to 
those honourable men who have made the mysteries of that Faith 
the study of their lives, and who undertake to explain them only 
so far as they can be comprehended. If we are told there is no 
direct proof for any of them, I retort neither is there any for these 
mysteries of Science ; in both cases (secting revelation aside), we 
have to depend on the Balance of Probabilities; the ground of 
acceptance is as firm in the one case as in the other. The exist- 
ence of a Creator can be proved in the same way as the existence 
of the Ether; we always accept that theory which best accounts 
for all the phenomena. 
There must be “‘ things hard to be understood”’ both in Revela- 
tion and in Science, since it is the same God who is the head of 
both, and ‘‘ His ways are past finding out,” along whichever path 
we trayel, It is our duty as intelligent beings to explore all these 
