24 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



that dispensation is not revealed in Nature, and is contained 

 in the Scriptures alone. 



With the double view just presented, I feel that science 

 and religion may walk hand in hand. They form two dis 

 tinct volumes of revelation, and both being records of the 

 will of the Creator, both may be received as constituting a 

 unity declaring the mind of God ; and therefore the study 

 of both becomes a duty, and is perfectly consistent with our 

 highest moral obligations. 



I feel that, as this subject respects my fellow-men, I have 

 done no more than my duty ; and I reflect upon my course 

 with subdued satisfaction, being persuaded that nothing I 

 have said or omitted to say in my public lectures, either 

 before the College classes or before popular audiences, can 

 have favored the erroneous impression, that science is hos 

 tile to religion. 



My own conviction is so decidedly in the opposite direc 

 tion, that I could wish that students of theology should be 

 also students of natural science, certainly of astronomy, 

 geology, natural philosophy, and chemistry, and the out 

 lines of natural history. 



In concluding my summary of these labors, I will add, 

 that I have derived no small satisfaction from the intense 

 interest excited, especially in popular audiences, by the 

 exhibition of the truths of science, and especially when 

 they were illustrated by experiments and by specimens. 

 Among the many thousands to whom I have spoken, and 

 in many different places, I have, with hardly an exception, 

 seen the most riveted attention, the most perfect silence, 

 except for occasional applause, which I never desired, 

 and the most exact decorum. When some surprising illus 

 tration has been given, perhaps contravening our usual ex 

 perience ; when some grand principle has been announced 

 of wide application, and when some happy appliance to 

 human wants, or to the furtherance of art, has been an 

 nounced, and the fruitfulness of science in its power to 



