HOME LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 345 



To Mrs. Alfred Gatty. 



Winton Road, Feast of St. Paul, 1863. 



Thank you very much for Dr. Vaughan's " The Book and 

 the Life," which I had intended getting. I have as yet only read 

 first and last sermons, which I thoroughly like. You mark a 

 passage in the first to which you cannot give a full assent, but 

 you judge rightly that it coincides with my views long held and 

 adhered to, long before those latter-day doubts came into 

 fashion. I do most thoroughly think that the revelation of 

 matters of science was never designed, and implicitly as I 

 should follow the revealed word in all its doctrinal teaching, if 

 it told me a fact of science, such as that water on cooling to 40° 

 becomes specifically lighter till the surface freezes, I should not 

 believe it for the word's sake without experimental tests. Yet 

 I do assuredly believe that that irregularity in the case of 

 water, which we know is of such vital consequence to all 

 creatures that live therein, was designed by an Allwise Fore- 

 thinker — before water was — as a special means to effect a 

 special end. I mention this familiar case just to show the 

 repugnance of my mind to receive any science as a revelation, 

 and, with Dr. Vaughan, I think it derogatory to the Almighty 

 to suppose that He would reveal to man what man by searching 

 can find out. I think it fairly proved by the cloudiness and 

 endless contradictions, and the dreamland into which meta- 

 physics (abstract) lead, that " man by searching cannot find out 

 God," nor solve the moral problems that he finds in himself, 

 and therefore these are, if anything be, the proper (and I think 

 the only proper) subjects of a revelation. If we contrast the 

 Bible with pretended revelations, we find that it steers clear 

 of the attempts to teach scientific facts such as they (the 

 Hindu books, and the old magical books of other nations) 

 largely profess to do. 



What Dr. V. says of the absurdity of foretelling a scientific 

 "truth," which though accepted as a truth to-day may be 

 proved to be a lie to-morrow, is very just. Science is always in 

 progress ; always polishing off old surfaces and bringing out 

 new. In her eye nothing is final, her faith knows no repose, 

 looks forward to no future rest. She cannot conceive either of 

 a beginning or an end, neither hath she any goal conceivable 



