8VIKNCE 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 lateet 

 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 rny 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 heen 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 Sandemanians," 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 theologies views nor the religious emotions which 



