334 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. XI. 



promise and no small performance. I was compelled to 

 enter into some religious conversation (not discussion) with 

 them, and found them creedless. I don't mean without 

 written or church creed, but having constructed no ' I 

 believe ' for themselves. Standing in that maddest of 

 all attitudes, viz., with finger pointed to this religious 

 body, and that religious body, expatiating upon their 

 faults, as if at the day of judgment it would avail them 

 anything that the Baptists were bigoted and the Quakers 

 self-righteous ! 



" These scientific brethren of ours watch us, no doubt, 

 not in an unkind, but still in a critical and unconsciously 

 analytical spirit, and see the motes in our eyes as the spots 

 in the sun. And are they not entitled to count these spots 1 

 and can we blame them for judging us as lights, which we 

 ought to be, and demand that the light that is in us be not 

 darkness 1 



" Oh to tell them kindly and wisely not to try themselves 

 by us, who are but dim and tarnished reflectors of the 

 Divine brightness, staining and colouring the few rays we 

 do retain, instead of sending them back pure and white as 

 they fell upon us, but to look to Him who is light, and in 

 whom is no darkness at all ; and when they find that they 

 cannot look on that awful splendour and live, to turn to Him 

 who is the brightness of His Father's glory, yet so veiled 

 in sinless flesh that all live the better by looking to Him, 

 and none indeed truly live otherwise than through and by 

 Him who is the light of life. 



" I see I have been rhapsodizing, but I don't often do 

 so. I hope one of these days for an opportunity of address- 

 ing the devotional meeting of our Edinburgh University 

 students. If so, I shall try to urge the scientific class to 

 believe in Christ as the Head of the Schools of. Science 



