32 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



is further elaborated, and a picture drawn of the 

 merely moral or upright man, that leaves him very 

 low down indeed in the scale of life, when contrasted 

 with the Scotch Presbyterian. He is still a stone 

 compared with the plant. " Here, for example, are 

 two characters, pure and elevated, adorned with 

 conspicuous virtues, stirred by lofty impulses, and 

 commanding a spontaneous admiration from all who 

 look upon them — may not this similarity of out- 

 ward form be accompanied by a total dissimilarity 

 of inward nature ? " And he adds that the differ- 

 ence is really as profound and basal as that between 

 the organic and the inorganic. 



As rhetoric or as theology, one need care little 

 for all this ; but when it is uttered as science, as it 

 is here, it is quite another matter. When it is de- 

 clared that a man, say like Emerson, in compari- 

 son with the general of the Salvation Army, is a 

 crystal compared to a flower, and the declaration is 

 made in the name and with the authority of science, 

 it is time to protest. In fact, to aver that the fin- 

 est specimens of the race who lived before the ad- 

 vent of Christianity, or who have lived since, and 

 honestly withheld their assent from the Calvinistic 

 interpretation of it, came short of the higher lite 

 and the true destiny of man, as much as the stone 

 comes short of the plant, may do as the personal 

 opinion of a Scotch professor, but to announce such 

 an opinion as the result of a scientific demonstration 

 is an insult to science and an outrage upon human 

 nature. 



