THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



teries of creation. We fear and tremble less, but we 

 marvel and enjoy more. God, as our fathers con- 

 ceived him, recedes, but law and order come to the 

 front. The personal emotion fades, but the cosmic 

 emotion brightens. We escape from the bondage of 

 our old anthropomorphic views of creation, into 

 the larger freedom of scientific faith. 



IV 



Our civilization is so largely the result of physical 

 science that we almost unconsciously impute all its 

 ugly features to science. 



But its ugly features can only indirectly be 

 charged to science. They are primarily chargeable to 

 the greed, the selfishness, the cupidity, the worldly- 

 mindedness which has found in science the tools to 

 further its ends. We can use our scientific knowl- 

 edge to improve and beautify the earth, or we can 

 use it to deface and exhaust it. We can use it to 

 poison the air, corrupt the waters, blacken the face 

 of the country, and harass our souls with loud and 

 discordant noises, or we can use it to mitigate or 

 abolish all these things. Mechanical science could 

 draw the fangs of most of the engineering monsters 

 that are devouring our souls. The howling locomo- 

 tives that traverse the land, pouring out their huge 

 black volumes of fetid carbon, and splitting our 

 ears with their discordant noises, only need a little 

 more science to purify their foul breaths and soften 

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