i873-J Sects and Science. 287 



far as to bring science into its proper position in deciding 

 truth whenever it can decide, but in speaking to the young 

 we must not be purely chemical or physical, we must re- 

 member to be men, and must contribute to education in 

 such a way as to educate the young to become men also. 

 We shall advocate no little doctrine of Little Bethel, or of 

 Romanism, Anglicanism, or scientism, as the only sections 

 in which truth are to be found, but we hope to be ready to 

 receive it wherever it is. Devoted to physical science as 

 we are, we should not suppose our sons to be educated by 

 being continually in a scientific laboratory, any more than 

 an intelligent minister of any religion would consider his 

 children to be educated by having them confined solely to 

 listen to the teaching from the pulpit. 



The struggles of mankind to obtain knowledge have been 

 long and various, and he only is educated as a man who 

 has followed them with sufficient attention to enable him 

 to learn the actual standpoint of humanity, and the method 

 of arrival. We can imagine our ancestors coming out of 

 the distant East, moving forward slowly towards Europe 

 with their flocks and their wealth, staying centuries occa- 

 sionally at a place because they liked it, and had few 

 enemies, and then moving along to some more favoured spot 

 when disturbed or becoming greedy of greater gain. Let 

 us imagine one of them who knew of the whole road, and 

 at last arrived at the rich lands of Normandy, or obtained 

 the full throne of England, boasting of the steps he had 

 made, and ridiculing the stupidity of his forefathers, perhaps 

 Odin, who was satisfied with poor plains in the North of 

 Europe, or some cold spot approaching to Scandinavia. It 

 would be an empty boast that he was greater than Odin ; 

 the triumph may be gained by the least able if he only lives 

 at the proper time for it. We hear our students of the 

 present criticising the past with a lightness which is pro- 

 ductive of smiles, and some of our scientific men are so 

 elated with their position as the latest men upon the earth, 

 that they would readily break off their connection with the 

 past, and live as the men in whom wisdom had first grown. 

 But they also will move to the past, and their wisdom will 

 be part of the long line, and they will be mere individuals 

 in the endless caravan which stretches from the beginning 

 into the future. It is only when we consider the littleness 

 of each that we can become truly wide or broad in our 

 sympathies. 



It might be worth while to enquire whether as a nation 

 we are becoming so or not ; probably we are broadening in 



