SCIENCE AND MAN. 621 
ism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated 
in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular 
offensiveness for me. If I wished to find men who are 
scrupulous in their adherence to engagements, whose 
words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of 
any kind is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a loving 
father, a faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and 
a just citizen I should seek him, and find him among 
the band of "atheists" to which I refer. I have known 
some of the most pronounced among them not only in 
life but in death seen them approaching with open eyes 
the inexorable goal, with no dread of a " hangman's 
whip," with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as 
mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of 
them, as if their eternal future depended upon their latest 
deeds. 
In letters addressed to myself, and in utterances addressed 
to the public, Faraday is often referred to as a sample of 
the association of religious faith with moral elevation. I 
was locally intimate with him for fourteen or fifteen years 
of my life, and had thus occasion to observe how nearly 
his character approached what might, without extrav- 
agance, be called perfection. He was strong but gentle, 
impetuous but self- restrained; a sweet and lofty courtesy 
marked his dealings with men and women; and though he 
sprang from the body of the people, a nature so fine might 
well have been distilled from the flower of antecedent 
chivalry. Not only in its broader sense was the Christian 
religion necessary lo Faraday's spiritual peace, but in what 
many would call the narrow sense held by those described 
by Faraday himself as "a very small and despised sect of 
Christians, known, if known at all, as Sandemauians," it 
constituted the light and comfort of his days. 
Were our experience confined to such cases, it would 
furnish an irresistible argument in favor of the association 
of dogmatic religion with moral purity and grace. But, 
as already intimated, our experience is not thus confined. 
In further illustration of this point, we may compare with 
Faraday a philosopher of equal magnitude, whose character, 
including gentleness and strength, candor and simplicity, 
intellectual power and moral elevation, singularly resembles 
that of the great Sandemanian, but who has neither shared 
the theologic views nor the religious emotions which 
