36 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



and we look with suspicion and dislike on any philosophy, 

 the apparent tendency of which is to dry up the soul. 

 Probably every change from ancient savagery to our present 

 enlightenment excited, in a greater or less degree, a fear 

 of this kind. But the fact is, that we have not yet deter- 

 mined whether the form under which they now appear in 

 the Avorld is necessary to the life and warmth of religious 

 feeling. We may err in linking the imperishable with the 

 transitory, and confound the living plant with the decaying 

 pole to which it clings. My object, however, at present is 

 not to argue, but to mark a tendency. We have ceased to 

 propitiate the powers of Nature — ceased even to pray for 

 things in manifest contradiction to natural laws. In Prot- 

 estant countries, at least, I think it is conceded that the 

 age of miracles is past. 



The general question of miracles is at present in able 

 and accomplished hands ; and were it not so, my polemical 

 acquirements are so limited, that I should not presume to 

 enter upon a discussion of this subject on its entire merits. 

 But there is one little outlying point, which attaches itself 

 to this question, on which a student of science, without 

 quitting the ground which strictly belongs to him, may 

 offer a remark. 



At the auberge near the foot of the Rhone glacier, I 

 met, in the summer of 1858, an athletic young priest, who, 

 after a solid breakfast, including a bottle of wine, informed 

 me that he had come up to " bless the mountains." This 

 was the annual custom of the place. Year by year the 

 Highest was entreated, by official intercessors, to make 

 such meteorological arrangements as should insure food 

 and shelter for the flocks and herds of the Valaisians. A 

 diversion of the Rhone, or a deepening of the river's bed, 

 would have been of incalculable benefit to the inhabitants 

 of the valley at the time I now mention. But the priest 

 would have shrunk from the idea of asking the Omnipo- 



