78 G. F. C. SEARLE, M.A., F.B.S., ON THE 
not only affects the motion of the earth by a calculable amount, 
but also the motions of the sun and of the remotest stars, and 
the motions of all these bodies will differ for the rest of time 
from the motions they would have had if the man had not 
moved his hand. 
But there are many other impressions received by man’s 
consciousness, and all of them are undoubtedly phenomena 
occurring in the universe. Among them are the demands of 
conscience, the sense of temptation and the knowledge of 
yielding to it, the power of prayer and the consciousness of 
answers to it, and the other spiritual experiences of men. Our 
knowledge of these things did not arise from the recent work 
of a few scientific men; the whole human race, for many 
centuries, has been conscious of their reality. The universe is 
so clearly the domain of order that it would be strange indeed 
if spiritual things were not subject to laws, though it is to be 
expected that these laws will differ from those obeyed by 
inanimate matter, just as free-will differs from gravitation or 
chemical affinity. The unity of the universe makes it 
impossible to suppose that we can ever cut ourselves off from 
the operations of those laws. Did we but realize this, we 
should covet earnestly the spirit of holy fear. When men 
have this spirit they not only pay reverent attention to 
spiritual things, but also think and speak reverently of all the 
things of the material world, as, for example, of the weather. 
They are conscious that they are dwelling in the Temple of 
God and it is the joy of their lives to give Him their worship 
and their obedience. 
The unity of the universe proclaims that there is absolute 
harmony between what is true in science and what is true in 
religion, and the fact that many of the greatest men of science 
have publicly acknowledged God in their scientific work shows 
the fallacy of the supposition that there is any antagonism 
between science and religion. Among these pioneers was 
Newton, who concluded his great Principia, or Mathematical 
Principles of Natural Philosophy, with a wonderful passage on 
the nature of God, “to discourse of whom,” he wrote, “from 
the appearances of things does certainly belong to Natural 
Philosophy.” Another pioneer has lately passed away from us 
in the person of Lord Kelvin, who for fifty-three years began 
the first lecture of each day by reciting a collect from the 
Prayer Book. In such lives as these there was wisdom and 
there was holy fear. May it not be that, after all, the fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ? 
