of tiny little waves passing every second through the coatings and 

 humours of the eye without being felt, and then dashing them- 

 selves against that delicate curtain at the back of the eyeball, 

 where the fibres of the optic nerve spread themselves out amongst 

 a film of delicate bloodvessels. This is just what happens every 

 time you look at a red ribbon, a ripe strawberry, anything red. 

 Look at the ribbon for one minute and multiply those billions by 

 sixty to see how many waves have struck the retina. A higher 

 rate of vibration gives consciousness of a different colour ; it takes 

 the greatest number to produce violet, no less than 727 billions per 

 second. No scientific man doubts this ; it can be proved mathe- 

 matically if you will take for granted the existence of the Ether. 

 We know the size of the imagined waves of this imagined sub- 

 stance, which no human eye has yet seen ; in red light there are 

 39,918 to the inch, in violet light 64,631. All space throughout 

 the grand archway of the Heavens is filled with this Ether, vibrat- 

 ing at these and other rates in every imaginable direction. Star- 

 light is but " the transported shiver of bodies countless millions 

 of miles distant, which translates itself in human consciousness as 

 the splendour of the firmanent at night." (Tyndall). 



Do these thoughts and figures seem to you impossible of accept- 

 ance ? They are articles of the Scientific Creed, and as such we 

 are bidden by the apostles of Science to accept them. You and I 

 cannot possibly attempt, each for himself, to fiud out the probable 

 truth or falsity of any of them. We must be content to accept 

 them at the hands of those who are " honourable men," whom we 

 can trust in these matters because they have made them the study 

 of their lives. We are not expected to refuse belief because they 

 are ditticult of comprehension. I ask then on behalf of those who 

 cUng to the Old Faith that they may be allowed to do that which 

 every student of iSTature and Science is expected to do, — to trust to 

 those honourable men who have made the mysteries of that Faith 

 the study of their lives, and who undertake to explain them only 

 so far as they can be comprehended. If we are told there is no 

 direct proof for any of them, I retort neither is there any for these 

 mysteries of Science ; in both cases (secting revelation aside), we 

 have to depend on the Balance of Probabilities ; the ground of 

 acceptance is as firm in the one case as in the other. The exist- 

 ence of a Creator can be proved in the same way as the existence 

 of the Ether ; we always accept that theory which best accounts 

 for all the phenomena. 



There must be " things hard to be understood " both in Revela- 

 tion and in Science, since it is the same God who is the head of 

 both, and " His ways are past finding out," along whichever path 

 we trayel. It is our duty as intelHgent beings to explore all these 



