SCIENCE AND MAN 



August number of the Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury you will find these words from his 

 pen : " The gospel of dirt is bad enough, 

 but the gospel of mere material comfort 

 is much worse." He contemptuously 

 calls the Comtist championship of the 

 working man " the championship of the 

 trencher." He would place "the leanest 

 liberty which brought with it the dignity 

 and power of self-help " higher than 

 " any prospect of a full plate without it." 

 Such is the moral doctrine taught by 

 this "atheistic" leader; and no Christian, 

 I apprehend, need be ashamed of it. 



Most heartily do I recognise and 

 admire the spiritual radiance, if I may 

 use the term, shed by religion on 

 the minds and lives of many personally 

 known to me. At the same time I can- 

 not but observe how signally, as regards 

 the production of anything beautiful, 

 religion fails in other cases. Its pro- 

 fessor and defender is sometimes at 

 bottom a brawler and a clown. These 

 differences depend upon primary dis- 

 tinctions of character which religion does 

 not remove. It may comfort some to 

 know that there are among us many 

 whom the gladiators of the pulpit would 

 call " atheists " and " materialists," whose 

 lives, nevertheless, as tested by any ac- 

 cessible standard of morality, would con- 

 trast more than favourably with the 

 lives of those who seek to stamp them 

 with this offensive brand. When I say 

 " offensive," I refer simply to the inten- 

 tion of those who use such terms, and 

 not because atheism or materialism, 

 when compared with many of the notions 

 ventilated in the columns of religious 

 newspapers, has any particular offensive- 

 ness for me. If I wished to find men 

 who are scrupulous in their adherence to 

 engagements, whose words are their bond, 

 and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind 

 is subjectively unknown ; if I wanted a 

 loving father, a faithful husband, an 

 honourable neighbour, and a just citizen 

 I should seek him, and find him, among 

 the band of " atheists " to which I refer. 

 I have known some of the most pro- 

 nounced among them not only in life but 



in death seen them approaching with 

 open eyes the inexorable goal, with no 

 dread of a " hangman's whip," with no 

 hope of a heavenly crown, and still as 

 mindful of their duties, and as faithful in 

 the discharge of them, as if their eternal 

 future depended upon their latest deeds. 



In letters addressed to myself, and in 

 utterances addressed to the public, Fara- 

 day is often referred to as a sample of 

 the association of religious faith with 

 moral elevation. I was locally intimate 

 with him for fourteen or fifteen years of 

 my life, and had thus occasion to observe 

 how nearly his character approached 

 what might, without extravagance, be 

 called perfection. He was strong but 

 gentle, impetuous but self-restrained; a 

 sweet and lofty courtesy marked his 

 dealings with men and women ; and 

 though he sprang from the body of the 

 people, a nature so fine might well have 

 been distilled from the flower of antece- 

 dent chivalry. Not only in its broader 

 sense was the Christian religion necessary 

 to Faraday's spiritual peace, but in what 

 many would call the narrow sense held 

 by those described by Faraday himself 

 as " a very small and despised sect of 

 Christians, known, if known at all, as 

 Sandemanians," it constituted the light 

 and comfort of his days. 



Were our experience confined to such 

 cases, it would furnish an irresistible 

 argument in favour of the association of 

 dogmatic religion with moral purity and 

 grace. But, as already intimated, our 

 experience is not thus confined. In 

 further illustration of this point, we may 

 compare with Faraday a philosopher of 

 equal magnitude, whose character, in- 

 cluding gentleness and strength, candour 

 and simplicity, intellectual power and 

 moral elevation, singularly resembles that 

 of the great Sandemanian, but who has 

 neither shared the theologic views nor 

 the religious emotions which formed so 

 dominant a factor in Faraday's life. I 

 allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abra- 

 ham of scientific men a searcher as 

 obedient to the command of truth as was 

 the patriarch to the command of God. 



