ITS METHODS AND TENDENCIES. 455 
struction of the edifice he was erecting. In his great task 
of undoing the work of blind, unreasoning faith, and wild, 
illogical speculation, all the fruit of such faith or specu- 
lation must be looked upon as matter valueless to his 
and. We may even go further and say that were it true 
that the Supreme Intelligence had created the material 
universe, and by special providence modified or thwarted 
the general laws through which that universe was gov- 
erned,—such Divine supervision, and such miraculous 
interposition must necessarily have been ignored. 
Let it not be inferred, however, that each and all of the 
great men who have been engaged in this work of scien- 
tific reformation were necessarily driven to be impious 
iconoclasts, or that in their efforts to emancipate them- 
selves from time-honored errors, they necessarily pros- 
tituted the liberty they gained to selfish or sensual pur- 
poses. On the contrary, the most important advances 
which the human intellect has made within these later 
centuries have been due to the efforts of men of the 
purest and most conscientious character ; men whose lives 
were devoted with the utmost singleness of purpose to 
determine what is truth; men who, knowing that all 
truth must be consistent with all other truth, were willing 
to go whithersoever it should lead. If it shall prove that 
they have been occupied with “mint, anise, and cumin,” 
omitting the “weightier matters of the law,” it is also true 
that in no other way could the material laws of the uni- 
verse be thoroughly investigated than by making them 
the subjects of an absorbed and undivided attention. And 
it is not true, in any sense, that these devotees of science 
have lived in vain; for to them we mainly owe the fact, 
that man is not only wiser now than formerly, but that 
he is better and happier. It would be as just to impugn 
