22 TOWN GEOLOGY. 



hope, and modestly and charitably, because in learning 

 true knowledge they will have learnt also their 

 own ignorance, and the vastness, the complexity, the 

 mystery of nature. But they will be able to rule, they 

 will be able to act, because they have taken the 

 trouble to learn the facts and the laws of nature. They 

 will rule ; and their rule, if they are true to themselves, 

 will be one of health and wealth, and peace, of 

 prudence and of justice. For they alone will be able 

 to wield for the benefit of man the brute forces of 

 nature ; because they alone will have stooped to 

 " conquer nature by obeying her/' 



So runs my dream. I ask my young readers to 

 help towards making that dream a fact, by becoming 

 (as many of them as feel the justice of my words) 

 honest and earnest students of Natural Science. 



But now : why should I, as a clergyman, interest 

 myself specially in the spread of Natural Science ? 

 Am I not going out of my proper sphere to meddle 

 with secular matters ? Am I not, indeed, going into 

 a sphere out of which I had better keep myself, and 

 all over whom I may have influence ? For is not 

 science antagonistic to religion ? and, if so, what has 

 a clergyman to do, save to warn the young against it, 

 instead of attracting them towards it ? 



First, as to meddling with secular matters. I 

 grudge that epithet of " secular" to any matter what- 

 soever. But I do more ; I deny it to anything which 

 God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most 

 insignificant atom of dust. To those who believe in 

 God, and try to see all things in God, the most minute 

 natural phenomenon cannot be secular. It must be 

 divine ; I say, deliberately, divine ; and I can use no 



