SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 281 



sun in 2004. Not only in large things — in 

 comets, and planets, and suns — is law faithful and 

 just ; but even in infinitesimal things it never fails 

 us. We know that if we add a certain amount of 

 oxygen to a certain amount of hydrogen we can 

 get a certain amount of water, and we get exactly that 

 amount. We may buy oil from an oil-merchant 

 under guarantee, and we may find that it fulfils its 

 guarantee or that it does not ; but the guarantee 

 of law never fails. Law guarantees that hydrogen 

 will always act in certain ways ; it may come from 

 a volcano on the Andes, it may come from the pores 

 of a meteorite ; but it will perform its appointed 

 functions with an exactitude beyond all exactitude 

 of man-made laws. Even the atoms of hydrogen 

 ninety-three million miles away in the sun are found 

 to throb in exactly the same rhythm as the hydrogen 

 obtained from a grain of Dead-Sea salt. The millions 

 and millions of atoms have each their own role, and 

 play it always in exactly the same fashion. 



Every proposition of science may be regarded 

 as a formulation of the promises of God, and every 

 successful application of the proposition as a practical 

 proof that the promises are true. Thus the pro- 

 position that oxygen is the agent of combustion is 

 proved every time we burn magnesium in oxygen 

 gas. The steam-engine, the motor-car, the clothes 

 we wear, the food we eat, the poisons we eschew. 



