22 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



practical life; and that, in this respect, if in no other, the 

 movement symbolised by the progress of the Royal Society 

 stands without a parallel in the history of mankind. 



A series of volumes as bulky as the Transactions oj the 

 Royal Society might possibly be filled with the subtle spec- 

 ulations of the Schoolmen; not improbably, the obtaining 

 a mastery over the products of mediaeval thought might 

 necessitate an even greater expenditure of time and of 

 energy than the acquirement of the *'New Philosophy"; 

 but though such work engrossed the best intellects of Europe 

 for a longer time than has elapsed since the great fire, its 

 effects were "writ in water," so far as our social state iz 

 concerned. 



On the other hand, if the noble first President of the 

 Royal Society could revisit the upper air and once more 

 gladden his eyes with a sight of the familiar mace, he would 

 find himself in the midst of a material civilisation more 

 different from that of his day, than that of the seventeenth 

 was from that of the first century. And if Lord Brouncker's 

 native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need 

 no long reflection to discover that all these great ships, these 

 railways, these telegraphs, these factories, these printing- 

 presses, without which the whole fabric of modern English 

 society would collapse into a mass of stagnant and starving 

 pauperism, — that all these pillars of our State are but the 

 ripples and the bubbles upon the surface of that great 

 spiritual stream, the springs of which only, he and his fel- 

 lows were privileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that 

 which it behoved them above all things to keep pure and 

 undefiled. 



It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive 

 our noble revenant not forgetful of the great troubles of his 

 own day, and anxious to know how often London had been 



