464 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. XL 



the days of Socrates or Seneca as in these days, for any good 

 Christ's coming apparently did him. There is something un- 

 speakably sad in his life, and it was better than that of many a 

 litterateur. The ferocity of attack on cant and hypocrisy ; the 

 girding at religion, which they cannot leave alone ; above all, 

 the dreary, meagre, cheerless, formal faith, and the dun and 

 doubtful prospect for the future, are features in that litterateur- 

 life most saddening and disheartening, 



"And the men of science, are they better? God forbid I 

 should slander my brethren in study, men above me in intel- 

 lect, capacity, and accomplishment. I delight to know that so 

 many of them are Christ's willing followers and beloved ser- 

 vants. But recently I have come across four of the younger 

 chemists, excellent fellows, of admirable promise and no small 

 performance. I was compelled to enter into some religious con- 

 versation (not discussion) with them, and found them creedless. 

 I don't mean without written or church creed, but having con- 

 structed no ' I believe' for themselves. Standing in that mad- 

 dest of all attitudes, viz., with finger pointed to this religious 

 body and that religious body, expatiating upon their faults, as 

 if at the day of judgment it would avail them anything that the 

 Baptists were bigoted and the Quakers self-righteous ! 



" These scientific brethren of ours watch us, no doubt, not in 

 an unkind, but still in a critical and unconsciously analytical 

 spirit, and see the motes in our eyes as the spots in the sun. 

 And are they not entitled to count these spots ? and can we 

 blame them for judging us as lights, which we ought to be, and 

 demand that the light that is in us be not darkness ? 



" Oh to tell them kindly and wisely not to try themselves by 

 us, who are but dim and tarnished reflectors of the Divine 

 brightness, staining and colouring the few rays we do retain, 

 instead of sending them back pure and white as they fell upon 

 us, but to look to Him who is light, and in whom is no dark- 

 ness at all ; and when they find that they cannot look on that 

 awful splendour and live, to turn to Him who is the brightness 

 of His Father's glory, yet so veiled in sinless flesh that all live 

 the better by looking to Him, and none indeed truly live other- 

 wise than through and by Him who is the light of life. 



