214 Natural Theology. 



they are brought into harmony with the forces and 

 conditions of the natural world. But the wildest 

 theorist cannot believe that the mind of man has 

 gradually developed under the influence of those 

 laws and evidences of mind in creation, which have 

 flashed upon the world only within the last century. 

 So far from their giving origin to mind, or influenc- 

 ing its nature, it is mind that seeks them out from 

 the darkness of ages ; seeks for them, too, in the 

 very foundation and framework of the globe. It 

 hungers for them before they are known, and seeks 

 for them as for hidden treasures. The study of 

 nature is nothing more nor less than the search for 

 mind. It brings wealth, indeed, and the means of 

 physical enjoyment ; but the whole history of science 

 shows that these were not the primary objects 

 sought for by the great leaders in scientific discove- 

 ries in all ages. 



They have ever been considered the dreamers and 

 impracticable men ; because ever pressing on in the 

 dark passages of Nature's temple, reading her ob- 

 scure inscriptions, they have had no products to 

 show to those who can see good only in silver and 

 gold and fruits of the earth. They have sought to 

 commune with the Maker of the universe by reading 

 the ancient inscriptions on its pillars and beneath 

 its foundation-stones, as scholars bend with wearied 

 eye and throbbing brain over the old mutilated in- 

 scriptions on the slabs and columns unburied in the 

 East. These do not expect to find lessons of wisdom* 

 in the old inscriptions, which they have never read 



