424 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIII. 



that there is any natural opposition between -scientific 

 genius and simple Christian faith. I will not compare him 

 with others who have had the genius without the faith. 

 Christianity, though she thankfully welcomes and deeply 

 prizes them, does not need now, any more than when 

 St. Paul first preached the Cross at Corinth, the speculations 

 of the subtle or the wisdom of the wise. If I wished to show 

 men, especially young men, the living force of the Gospel, I 

 would take them not so much to a learned and devout 

 Christian man, to whom all stores of knowledge were 

 familiar, but to some country village, where for fifty years 

 there had been devout traditions and devout practice. 

 There they would see the gospel lived out ; truths, which 

 other men spoke of, seen and known ; a spirit not of this 

 world visibly, hourly present; citizenship in heaven daily 

 assumed, and daily realised. Such characters I believe to 

 be the most convincing preachers to those who ask whether 

 Eevelation is a fable, and God an unknowable. Yes, in 

 most cases, not, I admit in all, simple faith, even peradven- 

 ture more than devout genius, is mighty for removing 

 doubts and implanting fresh conviction. But having said 

 this, we may well give thanks to God that our friend was 

 what he was, a firm Christian believer, and that his power- 

 ful mind, after ranging at will through the illimitable spaces 

 of Creation, and almost handling what he called "the 

 foundation stones of the material universe," found its true 

 rest and happiness in the love and the mercy of Him whom 

 the humblest Christian calls his Father. Of such a man it 

 may be truly said that he had his citizenship in heaven, and 

 that he looked for, as a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, 

 through whom the unnumbered worlds were made, and in 

 the likeness of whose image our new and spiritual body 

 will be fashioned. 



There was a preliminary funeral ceremony in 

 Trinity College Chapel, where the first part of the 

 Burial Service was read, in the presence of all the 

 leading members of the University. The body was 



