SCIENCE AND MAN 



same time I cannot but observe how signally, as regards 

 the production of anything beautiful, religion fails in other 

 cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at bottom 

 a brawler and a clown. These differences depend upon 

 primary distinctions of character which religion does not 

 remove. It may comfort some to know that there are 

 among us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would 

 call "atheists" and "materialists," whose lives, neverthe- 

 less, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would 

 contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who 

 seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I 

 say "offensive," I refer simply to the intention of those 

 who use such terms, and not because atheism or material- 

 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 citi- 

 zen 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 inex- 

 orable 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 ad- 

 dressed to the public, Faraday is often referred to as a 

 sample of the association of religious faith with moral ele- 



SCIENCE , 17 



