EXEKCISES AT THE LATIXG OF THE COENEE-STOXE. 175 



intelligible word. She has spoken ; her voice has been heard, and her 

 word we christen as Science. That word is truth. Man cannot know all 

 the truth she has to impart, but he can make approaches to her inmost 

 shrine ; he can deal in evidences ; he can accumulate knowledge, and 

 systematize it, and by his reason he can change darkness to light and 

 bring order out of chaos. That light and order are science, the substance, 

 of which material forms are but symbols. The man of science puts no 

 limits upon investigation, but the whole boundless universe is his. As 

 the astronomer, he calculates the distances of the stars and estimates 

 the forces which keep them in their orbits or bend them from their 

 courses, and with his eye a thousand times magnified, he penetrates infi- 

 nite space, resolving star-dust into nebulse, and nebulae into worlds. 

 Mars has been riding through the heavens the thousands of years that 

 man has lived, and none were wise and keen-eyed enough to see the ser- 

 vants that attended him, till last August his satelites were seen by the 

 astronomers at Washington. 



With the microscope man discerns the dust in the eye, the pestilence m 

 the air, the inhabitants that live in our breath, and the gases of the sun, 

 and the very passions of mankind are caught by the light in the camera 

 of the photographer, and the soul is inspected by the artist. The revela- 

 tions of science are perpetual. The last page in a book whose leaves are 

 infinite in number can never be read, but as man reads page after page 

 he is inspired with hope, and ever has the baptism of new light. In her 

 temple those minister who are self-consecrated, and none are debarred 

 from coming who will make the sacrifices she demands. Every one en- 

 tering here may speak with the oracle face to face, and all shall stand or 

 fall by tiieir own merits. Those only may teach in this temple who are 

 loyal to the evidences of truth. Says Mr. Huxley, " The most ardent 

 votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he 

 most venerate holds them, not because their verity is testified by por- 

 tents and wonders, but because his experience teaches him that whenever 

 he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary 

 source — nature, whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to ex- 

 periment and observation, nature will confirm them. The man of 

 science has learned to believe in justification by verification." 



The careful study of nature with the habit of mathematical thought, 

 makes one morally exact in his conduct. The reader who opens the 

 second volume of Charles Darwin's book, "The Descent of Man,'' will 

 find a postscript to the first volume in which he frankly says : " I have 

 fallen into a serious and unfortunate error in relation to the sexual dilfer- 

 erences of animals. The explanation given is wholly erroneous, as I 

 have discovered by working out an illustration in figures.'' Then follows 

 the needful correction of the error. It is such honesty as that, united 

 with consummate ability, which commends the thoughts of the scientist 

 to the candid consideration of the reader. 



Science is, and is destined still to be, the great reconciler of the con- 

 flicting interests of mankind, because it appeals always to facts and 

 their verification, and an international exposition of the products of art 



