EXTRACT XV. 



ON FAITH, AS APPLIED TO THE TEACHINGS OF 

 SCIENCE AND AS COMPARED WITH FAITH AS 

 DEFINED IN HOLY WRIT. 



SCIENCE, it may at once be said, is, in a sense, synonymous, 

 with faith, and consists in the discovery and appreciation 

 of the laws by which the universe is governed and ad- 

 ministered, each new fact of science falling, naturally, 

 into the category of proved and undeniable truth to be 

 believed by the scientist as undeviating and inexorable 

 in recurrence, and working for ever and ever ; moreover, 

 all so-called living things, and all conscious beings, thus, 

 of necessity, conform to the law of faith by belief in their 

 undeviating consistency of recurrence, in accordance with 

 the type they represent and the developmental obligations 

 imposed upon them, as the parts of a great whole, or 

 universe, all parts of which "work together in unison." 

 The expression, the universe, is an idea evolved by 

 humanity from its daily experience of the "passing of 

 events," and the appreciation of its environment, and one 

 which becomes essential to the thoughtful mind to enable 

 it to distinguish between the whole and its parts ; it 

 embraces, therefore, the greatest generalisation ever accom- 

 plished by man, and constitutes the foundation on which 

 all philosophical, scientific, and folk systems of "account- 

 ing for things" seen and unseen rest. It must, therefore, 

 be cherished by humanity as the "Alpha and Omega" 

 of its knowledge of itself and nature, because through it 

 humanity realises the great outstanding fact, that it consti- 

 tutes a merely fractional part of the universe. 



