288 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



in religious belief it has caused. The sense of this revolu- 

 tion is the extinction of the belief in a supernatural agency 

 presiding over, ordering, and directing the working of the 

 universe, from the making of a new world to the fall of a 

 stone. Whether we should deplore this profound change 

 or rejoice at it is a grave question which shall be dealt 

 with in the ending chapter of this book ; all we need 

 notice at present is the fact itself the most momentous 

 by far of all those which can touch the heart of mankind. 

 The knowledge of the existence of law leaves the integrity 

 of pure belief untouched : science has explained only the 

 working of the Cosmos, but neither its cause, nor its creation, 

 nor its meaning. And more, science has brought conviction 

 to us of the limited range of the human intellect. It has 

 owned itself powerless ever to discover ultimates. It has 

 owned that the existence of an atom is as much beyond 

 its grasp as the existence of a million of stars; it owns 

 that mystery meets man just as much now as it ever did, 

 or more; but it has removed that mystery further back 

 into the infinity of the Unknowable, and thereby removed 

 also into further depths the Object of belief, making it 

 more awful and incomprehensible. Whether it can be 

 said that by killing anthropomorphism science has purified 

 belief will no doubt be solved affirmatively at no distant 

 date by all the schools of theology, as it has already been 

 by some of the highest. Such are the chief bearings of 

 the most important effect which science has produced and 

 brought home to us with irresistible might. 



