ORATION OF PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER. 9 
dogmatic positiveness, I am confident he would have remanded its champions at 
once to the blackboard, and have begged them first to explain whether evolution 
were an agent, a force, or a law, and desired them to identify it if it were a force, 
or to formulate it if it were a law. Large as was the sphere which he assigned 
to the imagination, and important as the role which he allowed to hypothesis, he 
would bring every theory, however brilliant and plausible, to the triple test of 
coherence, sufficiency, and experiment. 
Forward and hopeful as he had been all his life long to follow the fruitful 
suggestions of analogy, he never would allow this winged steed to traverse the 
chasms of scientific theory with any flying leaps, without insisting that it should 
fold and pack its pinions and then carqfuUy retrace its steps over that hard path- 
way of fact and law which alone can carry us safely from a scientific hypothesis 
to a scientific truth. The science of America owes somewhat to his example and 
authority in this regard, that its brilliant promises and soUd achievements have 
been so far kept free from the speculative audacities and the physiological 
cosmogonies from which the science of England and Germany has not been 
wholly exempt. 
This, be it observed, was his position within the domains of pure science. 
For the region beyond, whether it is called the domain of philosophy or the 
domain of faith, let it suffice to say that he had too positive a respect for his own 
mind to doubt for an instant that this intellect was the reflex of that supreme in- 
tellect which sustains and controls the universe which the scientist interprets. 
The existence of a personal God was accepted by him as a well-nigh self-evident 
truth, as necessary to our confidence in scientific study as to our hopes for man's 
social and moral well being. The moral and spiritual capacities and destiny of 
man were regarded as dominant facts and chief ends of the universe made up of 
spirit and matter, facts and ends so important and so pressing as to create the 
need and establish the truth of the Christian's faith and hope. He believed, 
moreover, in no inherent law of progress in human nature or human society as 
such. On the contrary, he asserted often that our supreme hope of such progress, 
even in scientific culture and achievement, must rest on moral integrity and 
culture as the supreme conditions." 
The orator then dwelt on Henry's fixed idea that immorality is incompatible 
with the exercise of great mental power in scientific research. He had proposed 
to prepare a paper for the Philosophical Society on the relations of religion and 
science, and also upon the true import of prayer. This, however, he was not 
permitted to do. But he believed in and found joy in prayer. Almost his last 
words were: "Upon Jesus Christ, the one who for God affiliates himself with 
men, I rest my faith and hope !" He concluded with the following peroration : 
" For more than fifty years, the most memorable and critical which the sciences 
of nature have ever seen, he has been indeed a guiding star to their devotees in all 
this land, ever shining with a severe yet commanding light. 
During the critical years of its young and buoyant life American science has 
found much of the guidance and inspiration which it needed in his childlike yet 
