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SCIENTIFIC FAITH ONCE MORE 



I 



SCIENTIFIC faith is no more smooth sailing 

 than is theological faith. One involves about 

 as many mysteries, as many unthinkable truths, as 

 the other. It is unthinkable that a particle of mat- 

 ter can be so small that it cannot be made smaller, 

 yet the atomic theory of matter involves this con- 

 tradiction. The luminiferous ether, the most dense 

 and at the same time the most attenuated body in 

 the universe, which science has invented to account 

 for the action of bodies upon other bodies at a dis- 

 tance, is unthinkable; but with all the contradic- 

 tions which it involves, we are compelled to assume 

 its reality in order to account for things as we know 

 them. 



How many things may be affirmed of the visible, 

 ponderable bodies on the earth's surface which are 

 just the opposite of what is true of the invisible, im- 

 ponderable bodies of the interior world of matter, 

 and which also do not hold among the bodies of 

 celestial space! Thus all inanimate bodies on the 

 earth's surface are at rest until some force exterior 

 to themselves acts upon them. In the world of 



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