6 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [i. 



these factories, these printing-presses, without which the whole 

 fabric of modern English society would collapse into a mass of 

 stagnant and starving pauperism, that all these pillars of our 

 State are but the ripples, and the bubbles upon the surface of 

 that great spiritual stream, the springs of which, only, he and 

 his fellows were privileged to see ; and seeing, to recognise as 

 that which it behoved them above all things to keep pure and 

 undefiled. 



It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our 

 noble revenant not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, 

 and anxious to know how often London had been burned down 

 since his time, and how often the plague had carried off its 

 thousands. He would have to learn that, although London 

 contains tenfold the inflammable matter that it did in 1666 ; 

 though, not content with filling our rooms with woodwork and 

 light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive 

 gases into every corner of our streets and houses, we never 

 allow even a street to burn down. And if he asked how this 

 had come about, we should have to explain that the improvement 

 of natural knowledge has furnished us with dozens of machines 

 for throwing water upon fires, any one of which would have 

 furnished the ingenious Mr. Hooke, the first &quot;curator and 

 experimenter &quot; of the Royal Society, with ample materials for 

 discourse before half a dozen meetings of that body ; and that, 

 to say truth, except for the progress of natural knowledge, we 

 should not have been able to make even the tools by which these 

 machines are constructed. And, further, it would be necessary 

 to add, that although severe fires sometimes occur and inflict 

 great damage, the loss is very generally compensated by societies, 

 the operations of which have been rendered possible only by the 

 progress of natural knowledge in the direction of mathematics, 

 and the accumulation of wealth in virtue of other natural 

 knowledge. 



But the plague ? My Lord Brouncker s observation would not, 

 I fear, lead him to think that Englishmen of the nineteenth 

 century are purer in life, or more fervent in religious faith, than 



