32 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



of life finds the records of ancient forms of existence peo- 

 pling the world for ages, which, in relation to human expe- 

 rience, are infinite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent 

 for its manifestation on particular molecular arrangements 

 as any physical or chemical phenomenon; and wherever 

 he extends his researches, fixed order and unchanging 

 causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the rest of 

 Nature. 



Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the germ 

 of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, 

 out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that 

 which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual cover- 

 ings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of 

 Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative 

 merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is 

 needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the 

 present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology 

 of the present has become more scientific than that of the 

 past; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and 

 idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking 

 in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and 

 finespun ecclesiastical cobwebs: and of cherishing the 

 noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship 

 "for the most part of the silent sort" at the altar of the 

 Unknown. 



Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in our 

 minds by the improvement of natural knowledge. Men 

 have acquired the ideas of the practically infinite extent of 

 the universe and of its practical eternity; they are familiar 

 with the conception that our earth is but an infinitesimal 

 fragment of that part of the universe which can be seen; 

 and that, nevertheless, its durati«:;va is, as compared with 



