40 INTRODUCTION. TV. 



masses of tlie stars ? His conceptions of his own true position in the scale of being 

 become more rational. For a moment he views from a new position the distant 

 stars, as the peasant views them in a clear night : — points of light spangling the 

 blue vault above. And he reflects, " How do I Jcnow that those shining ones are 

 other than they seem ; how do I know their size, their distance, the laws by Avhich 

 they are governed ; the reins by which the " coursers of the sun" are held in their 

 appointed track ? How ? — but by the intellectual powers of that hurrsan spirit 

 which but now I deemed so poor and mean : — so unworthy of the very thought of 

 the Almighty — much more, so unworthy of the price which He has paid for it." 



Thus the mind, turned back upon itself, begins to discover that, after all, it is 

 not " of the earth, earthy," but derived from a higher source and reserved for a 

 higher destiny. And strange to say, this altered and bettered opinion of itself is 

 traceable to the first check which it feels — the first bafiling of its analytical powers. 

 So long as the mind was extending the sphere of its researches into the material 

 universe, weighing, and numbering, and tabulating all nature seemed to move in 

 blind obedience to a force whose influence might be calculated ; every world being 

 found to act upon its fellow in exact proportion to its position and its weight, and 

 our world to be but a part, and a small part of one vast machine. And with such 

 a view of the relation of the earth to the universe, might not unnaturally come a 

 lower estimate of man, the dweller on the earth. " Is he too but a part in the 

 house in which he dwells ? Is his course also subject to those immutable laws 

 which bind the universe together ? And if so, where is his individuality ? Where 

 the reflex of that image in which he is said to have been created ?" But the 

 moment that the mind apprehends the action of the inexplicable laws of life, and is 

 certified of the individuality of every living thing however small ; — and compares 

 these microscopic " wholes" with the " whole" that it feels itself to be, that moment 

 it begins to see that the human soul is a something apart from the world in and 

 over which it is placed. 



Galileo in his cell was bound in fetters, but his spirit could not be bound. His 

 thoughts were as free and his mind had as wide a range as if he could have flown 

 through all space on the wings of light. And thus it is with man : prisoned for a 

 short time in this lower world, he belongs to an order of being that no world can 

 confine. He cannot continue stationary, nor plod for ever a dull round in the 

 treadmill here. He must either rise above all height into communion with the 

 Deity ; or fall, bereft of hope, for ever. We must not estimate such a being by the 

 narrow bounds of the cell which he now inhabits. We must judge of him by his 

 intellectual powers, his aspirations, his intuitive conceptions of his own nature ; 

 and, as a spirit, all these place him, in his individuality, far above any plurality of 

 mere material worlds. 



I may seem to be wandering from my proper theme, but my object is to vindicate 

 the teaching of the Book of Nature from the aspersions of the ignorant and the 

 prejudiced. Whilst I admit that half views of natural science may lead men astray ; 

 and whilst I deplore the infidelity of scientific men, whose minds are absorbed in 

 the material on which they work ; — I deny that the study of nature has, in itself, 

 an evil tendency. On the contrary, the study of organic nature, at least, ought to 



