IV. INTRODUCTION. 39 



sneer at the "knowledge that pviffeth u-p" until, like the Apostle, they have sounded 

 its depths and proved its shallowness. 



Why should the study of the physical sciences be supposed to have an evil influ- 

 ence on the mind — a tendency to lead men to doubt every truth which cannot be 

 made the direct subject of analysis or experiment ? I can conceive a one-sided 

 scientific education having this tendency. If the mind be propelled altogether in 

 one direction, and that direction lead exclusively to analytical research, it is possible 

 that the other faculties of the individual may become clouded or enfeebled — and 

 then he is the unresisting slave of analysis — not more a rational being than any 

 other monomaniac. And yet, paradoxical though the assertion seem, he may be 

 all his life a reasoner, forming deductions and inductions with the most rigid accu- 

 racy, in his beaten track. 



I can conceive too the astronomer, conversant with the immensity of space and 

 its innumerable systems of worlds, so prostrated before the majesty of the material 

 creation, as not only to lose sight of himself and of the whole race to which he 

 belongs, but of the world or even of the solar system, and be led to doubt whether 

 things so poor, and mean, and small can have any value in the sight of the Lord 

 of so wide a dominion. I can conceive him, too, observing the uniformity and the 

 harmony of the laws that govern the whole system of the heavens ; the unde- 

 viating course of all events among the stars coming round as regularly as the 

 shadow on the dial ; and the little evidence there is that this uniformity has ever 

 suffered any disturbance that cannot be accounted for by the law of gravitation, 

 and made the subject of calculation by the mathematician, who, working an equa- 

 tion in his closet, shall come forth and declare the cause of irregularity, though 

 that cause may be acting at thousands of millions of miles distance— Tl can con- 

 ceive him inferring from a uniformity like this the absence of a superintending 

 Providence in human affairs. If the Creator, he will say, have given up the very 

 heaven of heavens to the immutable laws of gravitation, can I believe that he 

 interferes by his Providence to superintend the puny matters of this lower world? 



His reasons seem plausible while the mind is pointed in that one direction. But 

 they lose all their force when, laying aside for a moment the telescope, the philo- 

 sopher investigates with his microscope the structure of any living thing, no matter 

 how small and how seemingly simple the organism may be. Let the object 

 examined but have life, and it will soon lead him to understand a little of the mean- 

 ing of God's glorious title, Maxiiims in minimis. And the further he carries his 

 researches, the more the field of research opens, until, extending from the speck 

 beneath his lens, it spreads wider and wider, and at length blends with infinity at 

 the " horizon's limit." Here his boasted analysis can afford him no help. He 

 has laid bare the " mechanism of the heavens ;" he has weighed the sun and the 

 planets ; he has foretold with unerring certainty events which shall happen a 

 thousand years after he shall be laid in the dust ; — and yet he cannot unravel the 

 mysteiy that shrouds the seat of life, even as it exists in the meanest thing that 

 crawls. And if the life of this poor worm be thus wonderful, what is that spirit 

 which animates the human frame ? What is that humanity which, but a moment 

 ago, seemed like the small dust in the balance compared with the multitude and the 



