224 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CEEED OF SCIENCE. 



got the secret. Nor did the philosophers succeed better. 

 The cloud-constructed systems of the great metaphysi- 

 cians who attempted, by a different route and fashion, 

 by the might of their own reason, to take by storm the 

 secret that they knew had not been voluntarily revealed, 

 came no nearer to disclosing the actual truth of things or 

 the final reality and mystery at the bottom of them. 

 The religions and absolute philosophies alike report only 

 the reveries or imperfect imaginings of the individual, 

 which were mistaken by one for the voice of Revelation, 

 by the other for the last truth of Reason and Nature. 



The revelation of science is, indeed, much less precise 

 and circumstantial than that of the religious founders; 

 but it more accords with facts, with the historical fact as 

 witnessed to by marks which geology reads, and with 

 the present actual facts and laws which, during the 

 human historical period, we believe to have been never 

 different. The chain of established scientific truths and 

 laws contains a less sublime scheme and conception of 

 the universe than the grand systems of Plato, or Leib- 

 nitz, or Hegel ; but it is at least more simple and level 

 to our intelligence, it is much closer to the actuality of 

 things, and it always admits of verification. The scien- 

 tific conception of the universe can be compared with 

 the actual facts ; it is merely gathered and generalized 

 from these facts; while the scientific story of Nature's 

 development challenges disproof or refutation, by con- 

 frontation with inexplicable facts and by every applic- 

 able inductive or deductive test. Science may be open 

 to correction in detail, but she believes she holds the 

 substantial truth. In the case of the philosophical 

 systems, they have either no counterpart, being con- 

 structed wholly from the imagination, or if there be any 

 original corresponding to the philosophers' scheme, it 



