The Religious Work of Science. 493 



law of attraction, which explains the celestial harmonies. 

 This closed the first great scientific epoch by the establish- 

 ment of the principle of natural order throughout space. 

 But if the order of the universe prevails through space, 

 must it not also prevail through time ? Inquiry now took 

 a new direction, the current widened, new sciences arose, 

 and another century of research revealed the grand truth 

 that the system of order and law is as vast and perfect in 

 its time relations as it had been shown to be in the relations 

 of space. 



This mighty revelation of the workings of the Infinite 

 Power we owe not to those who devoted themselves pro- 

 fessionally to the exposition of the plans and purposes 

 of God, but to men of science who got neither sympathy 

 nor co-operation from that class. In their whole course 

 from the beginning of research, the scientific students of 

 Nature encountered two orders of obstacles. The first per- 

 tained to the character of the work. The discovery of new 

 truth is not an easy thing ; it is too precious to be had for 

 the mere asking. Under the best methods it is a difficult, 

 painful, and uncertain pursuit, while the methods themselves 

 were only attainable through long experience. Nor is it 

 given to every earnest devotee of science to add to the stock 

 of original truth : while thousands strive, but few secure the 

 prizes. Moreover, the early investigators were embarrassed 

 and constantly defeated by the inherited mass of errors and 

 prejudices by which judgment was warped and the mental 

 vision obscured. The idea that law is inflexible and uni- 

 versal throughout Nature was long unrecognized, and the 

 special students of science went no further than to assume 

 it in their own fields of investigation. Added to these diffi- 

 culties was the widespread and deeply rooted feeling 

 among the ignorant masses — which in this respect compre- 

 hend almost everybody — that existing knowledge was suffi- 

 cient, and that to pry into the mysteries of Nature was idle, 



