26 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



find for her is, to liken her to such a peasant woman as one 

 sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, 

 and with mind bent only on her home; but yet without 

 effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now 

 stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children 

 will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely 

 it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate 

 this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine — a mere 

 provider of physical comforts? 



However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and not a 

 few of them, who take this view of natural knowledge, and 

 can see nothing in the bountiful mother of humanity but a 

 sort of comfort-grinding machine. According to them, the 

 improvement of natural knowledge always has been, and 

 always must be, synonymous with no more than the improve- 

 ment of the material resources and the increase of the grati- 

 fications of men. 



Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother of 

 mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and, if need be, 

 with sternness, in the way they should go, and instructing 

 them in all things needful for their welfare; but a sort of 

 fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of 

 swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's 

 lamps, so that they may have telegraphs to Saturn, and see 

 the other side of the moon, and thank God they are better 

 than their benighted ancestors. 



If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly care 

 to toil in the service of natural knowledge. I think I would 

 just as soon be quietly chipping my own flint axe, after the 

 manner of my forefathers a few thousand years back, as be 

 troubled with the endless malady of thought which now 

 infests us all, for such reward. But I venture to say that 

 such views are contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those 



