IN THE NOON OF SCIENCE 



the old features and the old associations have been, 

 and still are, a sore trial, a much finer, more spa- 

 cious and commodious house, with endless improve- 

 ments and conveniences, but new, new, all bright 

 and hard and unfamiliar, with the spirit of newness ; 

 not yet home, not yet a part of our lives, not yet 

 sacred to memory and affection. 



The question now is : Can we live as worthy and 

 contented lives there as our fathers and grand- 

 fathers did in their ruder, humbler dwelling-place? 

 What we owe to science on our moral and aesthetic 

 side it would not be so easy to say, but we owe it 

 much. It is only when we arm our faculties with 

 the ideas and the weapons of science that we ap- 

 preciate the grandeur of the voyage we are mak- 

 ing on this planet. It is only through science that 

 we know we are on a planet, and are heavenly voy- 

 agers at all. When we get beyond the sphere of our 

 unaided perceptions and experience, as we so quickly 

 do in dealing with the earth and the heavenly bod- 

 ies, science alone can guide us. Our minds are lost 

 in the vast profound till science has blazed a way 

 for us. The feeling of being lost or baffled may give 

 rise to other feelings of a more reverent and pious 

 character, as was the case with the early star- 

 gazers, but we can no longer see the heavens with 

 the old eyes, if we would. Science enables us to 

 understand our own ignorance and limitations, and 

 so puts us at our ease amid the splendors and mys- 

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