REV. JAMES MAETINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 241 



defrauded it of an intrinsic architectural power, which 

 the art of man, even when pushed to its utmost degree 

 of refinement, is incompetent to imitate. I would 

 invite Mr. Martineau to consider how inappropriate his 

 figure of a fictitious bank deposit becomes under these 

 circumstances. The 'account current' of matter re- 

 ceives nothing at my hands which could be honestly 

 kept back from it. If, then, 'Democritus and the 

 mathematicians ' so defined matter as to exclude the 

 powers here proved to belong to it, they were clearly 

 wrong, and Mr. Martineau, instead of twitting me with 

 my departure from them, ought rather to applaud me 

 for correcting them. 1 



The reader of my small contributions to the litera- 

 ture which deals with the overlapping margins of 

 Science and Theology, will have noticed how frequently 

 I quote Mr. Emerson. I do so mainly because in him 

 we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is 

 really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of 

 Science, past, present, or prospective. In his case 

 Poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver 

 brother Science by the hand, and cheers him with 

 immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions 

 are continually transmuted into the finer forms and 

 warmer hues of an ideal world. Our present theme is 

 touched upon in the lines 



The journeying atoms, primordial wholes 

 Firmly draw, firmly drive by their animate poles. 



As regards veracity and insight these few words out- 



1 Definition implies previous examination of the object defined, 

 and is open to correction or modification as knowledge of the objeot 

 increases. Such increased knowledge has radically changed our 

 conceptions of the luminiferous aether, converting its vibrations 

 from longitudinal into transverse. Such changes also Mr. Mar- 

 tineau's conceptions of matter are doomed to undergo. 

 YOL. II. B 



