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confidently for more light. When centuries ago naviga- 

 tion extended not beyond the pillars of Hercules, coin of 

 that time was stamped with the words " JVe Plus Ultra." 

 When the Antilles were discovered the word " Ne " was 

 stricken off, and the inscription read "Plus Ultra" and 

 the world waited for the " More Beyond." This hemis- 

 phere has justified that faith. Agassiz stood upon an out- 

 look few men ever reach, and peering into the unknown 

 waited meekly, yet confidently for the "More Beyond." 

 Can we not all agree with Draper, who thought that, 

 " Man however learned and pious he may be, is not al- 

 ways a reliable interpreter of the ways of God. In de- 

 ciding whether any philosophical doctrine is consistent or 

 inconsistent with the Divine attributes, we are too prone to 

 judge of those attributes by our own finite and imperfect 

 standard, forgetting that the only test to which we ought 

 to resort is the ascertainment if the doctrine be true. If 

 it be true, it is in unison with God." Eminent scientists 

 have not always accepted this rule, for Prof. Tyndall says 

 "In one of my latest conversations with Sir David Brews- 

 ter he said to me that his chief objection to the undulato- 

 ry theory of light was that he could not think the Crea- 

 tor guilty of so clumsy a contrivance as the filling of 

 space with ether in order to produce light. This, I may 

 say, is very dangerous ground, and the quarrel of science 

 with Sir David, as with many other persons, is that they 

 profess to know too much about the mind of the Creator." 

 La Place was convinced that if the Almighty had made 

 the moon he would have placed it much farther away from 

 the earth, and otherwise changed its relation to this 

 planet. A more modern philosopher has discovered in 

 the defects of the eye sufficient evidence that the All-wise 

 optician had nothing to do in its construction. 



In his antiquity of man Lyell quotes a saying of 

 Agassiz that tersely exhibits the progress of science. He 

 said that' whenever a new and startling fact is brought to 

 light in science, people first say " it is not true," then 

 "' that it is contrarv to religion," and lastly, " that every- 

 body knew it before." From the ancient days when it 



