AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 39 



transitory exercise 1 Besides, the improvement of our faculties 

 in tlie study of nature, (even so, is best to apply our knowledge to 

 human progress,) is but the study of one form of that revelation 

 which the Divinity has made to man, — the foot-prints of that In- 

 finite Mind, pervading mind as well as matter, living in all the 

 forms of life, acting in all the grandest, in all the most subtle ope- 

 rations of nature. Most carefully in this place would I abstain 

 from any reference to interdicted topics, yet my audience will 

 bear to be reminded that scientific truth is but another name for 

 the laws of nature, and that such laws are merely the expression 

 of the uniformity of the mode in which the Great Author of Na- 

 ture operates in the created universe. All science then, is only 

 a history of the divine operations, and all scientific truth is but 

 the proof of the existence or the illustration of the perfections of 

 Deity. Let it not be said then, that in advocating the unlimited 

 freedom of the exercise of the human faculties upon all that is 

 legitimately within their grasp, there is the danger of fostering the 

 pride of human intellect. Nobly has Sir John Herschel vindi 

 cated science, and even the cultivation of a national and secular 

 education from the charge of sceptical tendencies ; and the apho- 

 rism of Lord Bacon is much to the same purpose, that though 

 a smattering of philosophy may lead to atheism, a thorough ac- 

 quaintance with it, instead of fostering an overweening self-coo- 

 ceit, only furnishes the best safeguard against enthusiasm and seM 

 deception, and inevitably leads to the recognition of the elementary 

 outlines of all practical religious truth. 



Knowledge and thought, or the power of accumulating facts 

 and then combining and reasoning upon them, constitutes at once 

 the delight and the exclusive prerogative of Man, and as such, 

 form the basis of all national wealth and true supremacy. Plato 

 has told us that Socrates desired that " reason should be held as 

 the sole interpreter of nature." But when in after ages intoler- 

 ance held up the mirror to nature's face, or attempted the sup- 

 port of her own prescriptive dogmas by denying the apparently 

 irreconcilable truths presented by the telescope to the senses; 

 when science paralysed by fear, tremblingly refused to look her 

 own truths in the face, because they contradicted assumptions 



