30 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



all know the reply. Astronomy, — which of all sciences 

 has filled men's minds with general ideas of a character 

 most foreign to their daily experience, and has, more than 

 any other, rendered it impossible for them to accept the 

 beliefs of their fathers. Astronomy, — which tells them that 

 this so vast and seemingly solid earth is but an atom among 

 atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, through illimit- 

 able space; which demonstrates that what we call the peace- 

 ful heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an infinitely 

 subtle matter whose particles are seething and surging, 

 like the waves of an angry sea; which opens up to us infi- 

 nite regions w^here nothing is known, or ever seems to have 

 been known, but matter and force, operating according to 

 rigid rules; which leads us to contemplate phenomena the 

 very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had 

 a beginning, and that they must have an end, but the very 

 nature of which also proves that the beginning was, to our 

 conceptions of time, infinitely remote, and that the end is 

 as immeasurably distant. 



But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who ask 

 for bread and receive ideas. What more harmless than the 

 attempt to lift and distribute water by pumping it; what 

 more absolutely and grossly utilitarian ? Yet out of pumps 

 grew the discussions about Nature's abhorrence of a vac- 

 uum; and then it was discovered that Nature does not abhor 

 a vacuum, but that air has weight; and that notion paved 

 the way for the doctrine that all matter has w^eight, and that 

 the force which produces weight is co-extensive with the 

 universe, — in short, to the theory of universal gravitation 

 and endless force. While learning how to handle gases led 

 to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern chemistry, and 

 to the notion of the indestructibility of matter. 



Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, than 



