may be true, that the day of religious art. and religious music, and religious 

 literature is over. The star which arose in the East, it is said, has passed to 

 its setting in the West ; and now there arises, out of the West, a star brighter 

 than the star of Bethlehem, the star of science, which is to disenchant us 

 of all our old reverence and faith. It is to reveal to us the unreality of every 

 thing on which faith has built, and make clear to us that this world of sense 

 is the only real world, and that death is the end of all our life ; that even 

 our human race is to be swept away into utter nothingness, eternal silence 

 and eternal frost. 



It requires but an instant's attention to recognize this as the same strain 

 which has been repeated to us from the left for as many centuries as litera- 

 ture records. It can win attention and belief only by first diverting our at- 

 tention from understanding and wisdom, and fastening it exclusively on 

 knowledge. It is not the voice of science, but only the voice of unwise 

 scientific men. The great increase of knowledge, the marvellous progress of 

 the physical sciences during the last three-quarters of a century, has fulfilled 

 the saying of the preacher, " He that increaseth knowledge increaseth 

 sorrow." Many men who have attained a large knowledge of the movements 

 of matter in the building of plants and animals, fancy themselves thereby 

 qualified to speak with authority concerning questions of metaphysics and 

 theology ; and they utter themselves in these doleful denials of the realities 

 of our Christian faith. At the same time, by their activity in matters of 

 scientific publication, they give to the public the impression that they are 

 leaders in science ; and thus their gloomy denials of religious wisdom have 

 the more disheartening effect on the public mind. 



The evil will be temporary. The Lord giveth wisdom, and out of his 

 mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. The real leaders in science, 

 the master spirits, to whom all three gifts of intellectual power are vouch- 

 safed in due proportion, and each in large measure, are to-day, as they have 

 been in all past ages, men of faith, of devout and religious spirit, recognizing 

 God as the Creator, finding in all their study of His works that there is not 

 an atom in the universe which does not bear indelible evidences of the 

 wisdom and goodness of the Almighty Power which formed it. 



We laid yesterday in the grave the body of one who has long been recog- 

 nized, both in Europe and America, as a man of extensive learning and of the 

 highest genius. Some of his triumphs in the realm of mathematics and as- 

 tronomy have been as sublime as those of any man among the living or the 

 dead. His vigorous powers have until within a year past shown no signs 



