PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 22T 



order to conciliate those who would erect the scientific standard 

 over more territory than they have conquered. He had none of 

 that spirit which would rather be wrong with Plato than right 

 with anybody else. He wanted to follow wherever truth was^in 

 the van. But better than most men, I think, he knew how to 

 discriminate between what a British scholar calls the duty of 

 "following truth wherever it leads us, and the duty of yielding 

 to the immediate pressure of an argument." He saw, as the same 

 writer adds, that for whole generations "the victory of argument 

 may sway backwards and forwards, like the fortune of single 

 - battles," but the victory of truth brings in peace, and a peace 

 which comes to stay. He swept the scene of conflict with the 

 field-glass of a commander-in-chief, and did not set up his trophies 

 because of a brilliant skirmish on the picket lines of science. But 

 he believed in the picket line, and rejoiced in every sharpshooter 

 Who fought with loyalty to truth in the forefront of the scientific 

 army. 



A man of faith, Prof Henry was a man of prayer. But his 

 views of prayer were perhaps peculiar in their spirituality There 

 was nothing mechanical or formal in his theory of this religious 

 exercise. He held that it was the duty and privilege of enlight- 

 ened Christians to live in perpetual communion with the xilmighty 

 Spirit, and in this sense to pray without ceasing. Work was 

 worship, if conducted in this temper. He accepted all the appoint- 

 ments of nature and Providence as the expressions of Infinite 

 Wisdom, and so in everything gave thanks.* He believed that 



* The " sweet reasonableness" into which he had schooled his temper 

 was manifested by the great trial which befell him in the year 1865, when 

 the Sraitlisonian building suffered from the ravages of a fire, which de- 

 stroyed all the letters written down to that date by Prof. Henry, as 

 Smithsonian Secretary, in reply to innumerable questions relating' to 

 almost every department of knowledge. Besides, the Annual Report of 

 the Institution in manuscript, nearly ready for the press, a valuable col- 

 lection of papers on meteorology, with written memoranda of his own to 

 aid in their digest, and countless minutes of scientific researches which 

 he purposed to make, all perished in the flames. Yet he was more con- 

 cerned about the loss of Bishop Johns's library, which had been entrusted 

 to his care, than about the loss of his own papers and records. Referring 

 to the latter in a letter written to his friend. Dr. Torrey, a f^w days after 

 the fire, he held the following language : "A few years ago such a calamity 

 would have paralyzed me for future efforts, but in my present view of life 

 I take it as the dispensation of a kind and wise Providence, and trust that 

 it will work to my spiritual advantage." 



