MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISIM 79 



defence of this pantheistic piety by quoting the 

 patriarch of many tribulations, in his impassioned 

 cry, " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him ! " 

 is as vain as it is profane. This is only to repeat in 

 a new form the fallacious paradox of those grim and 

 obsolete sectarians who held that the test of a state 

 of grace was " willingness to be damned for the 

 glory of God." The spirit that truly desires right- 

 eousness longs with an unerring instinct for im- 

 mortality as the indispensable condition of entire 

 righteousness, and when invited to approve its own 

 immolation for the pretended furtherance of the 

 Divine glory will always answer as a noble matron 

 applying for admission to the church once answered 

 the inquisitorial session of her Calvinistic society, — 

 " I certainly am not willing to be damned for the 

 glory of God ; were I so, I should not be Jiere ! " 

 This sense of our vocation to moral perfection, 

 and of all it implies as to freedom and continuance, 

 is what makes our main question of such thrilling 

 concern. The question starts a ghastly fear, lest 

 science may be the doom of our loftiest hopes. If 

 so, it will quench the aspirations which have been 

 the soul of man's grandest as well as sublimest 

 endeavours ; for the beliefs it will destroy are the 

 real foundation of all that has given majesty and 

 glory to history. To present universal Nature as 

 the deep in which each soul with its moral hopes 



