® 
ITS METHODS AND TENDENCIES. 457 
Such opposition, in the first place, must be fruitless. 
All history has proved that persecution by physical co- 
ercion or obloquy is powerless to arrest the progress of 
ideas, or quench the enthusiasm of the devotees of a cause 
approved by their moral sense. The problems before our 
men of science must be solved in the manner proposed, if 
human wisdom will suflice for the task. In every de- 
partment of science are men actuated simply by a thirst 
for truth, whom neither heat nor cold, privation nor op- 
position will hold back from their self-appointed tasks. 
We may, therefore, accept it as a finality, that this prob- 
lem will be carried to its logical conclusion. 
In the second place, if pose, the arrest of scientific 
investigation would be not only undesirable, but an infi- 
nite calamity to our race, As has been so often said, 
truth is consistent with itself. If, therefore, our faith in 
this or that is based on truth, we have no cause for fear 
that this truth will be proved untrue by other truths. 
And more than this: it seems to me, that, in the reach 
and thoroughness of this material investigation, we may 
hope for such demonstration of the reality of things imma- 
terial as shall produce a deeper and more deml Jaith 
than has ever yet prevailed. 
Through this very spirit of scepticism which pervades 
the modern sciences we are compelled to exhaust all ma- 
terial means before we can have recourse to the super- 
natural. When, however, that is done, and men have 
tried patiently and laboriously, but in vain, to refer all 
natural phenomena to material causes, then, having proved 
a negative, they will be compelled to accept the existence 
of truth not reached by their touchstone, and faith be re- 
cognized as the highest and best knowledge. 
That such will be the result is the confident expecta- 
AMERICAN NAT., VOL. I. 
