JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 133 



zealous in the discharge of their duties ; and, at present, 

 apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than 

 on meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broad- 

 ened so much, that Anglican divines put forward doc- 

 trines more liberal than those of Priestley ; and, in our 

 state-supported churches, one listener may hear a sermon 

 to which Bossuet might have given his approbation, 

 while another may hear a discourse in which Socrates 

 would find nothing new. 



But great as these - changes may be, they sink into 

 insignificance beside the progress of physical science, 

 whether we consider the improvement of methods of 

 investigation, or the increase in bulk of solid knowledge. 

 Consider that the labours of Laplace, of Young, of Davy, 

 and of Faraday ; of Cuvier, of Lamarck, and of Robert 

 Brown ; of Yon Baer, and of Schwann ; of Smith and 

 of Hutton, have all been carried on since Priestley dis- 

 covered oxygen ; and consider that they are now things 

 of the past, concealed by the industry of those who have 

 built upon them, as the first founders of a coral reef 

 are hidden beneath the life's work of their successors ; 

 consider that the methods of physical science are slowly 

 spreading into all investigations, and that proofs as valid 

 as those required by her canons of investigation, are 

 being demanded of all doctrines which ask for men's 

 assent ; and you will have a faint image of the astound- 

 ing difference in this respect between the nineteenth 

 century and the eighteenth. 



If we ask what is the deeper meaning of all these 



