162 



NOTE. 



ON THE EXTENT TO WHICH PRAYER IS REPUDIATED 

 BY MATERIALISM. 



Some months have elapsed since the foregoing paper was read : in it Pro- 

 fessor Tyndall's "fragmentary'' treatment of the gravest of all subjects 

 has been dealt with in a spirit of forbearance, and with the courtesy due to a 

 man of science who had mistaken his way, and shown that he was not qualified 

 for philosophical reasoning. His sincere " love of truth " {Section 31) was 

 not doubted ; it was rather with some confidence relied on. If, then, he has 

 placed himself and his cause, before all capable thinkers, in an unintelligible 

 or embarrassing position,* the blame, at all events, is not with us. 



Whatever else may afi'ord to be " fragmentary," love of truth cannot. It 

 may be that Professor Tyndall is so fully occupied in his own particular, 

 though somewhat narrow, department of work, that he has no time to give 

 himself thoroughly to philosophy : but if so, he should not capriciously 

 diverge from subjects which he handles with ability to trifle with those for 

 which he shows no aptitude, and in which he refuses to qualify himself. In 

 one respect he has an advantage on his side in such a course ; just as a 

 lecturer on chemistry, at some young " Institute," attracts popular applause 

 by the apparatus which he exhibits, with all the experiments, the explosions, 

 and the lights, which contrast so strikingly with some less charming lecture on 

 history, or jurisprudence, on a previous evening, — and, for the hour, " he may 

 do anything," — so it is to be feared that there is around Professor Tyndall a 

 mentally juvenile circle of listeners, ready, with ahando7u to enjoy that which 

 sparkles, and unwilling to take much pains with the graver subjects on which 

 his hasty light only flashes for a moment. Professor Tyndall, of course, may 

 again write, in his bright way, "Fragments of Science for Unscientific 

 People " ; but we are absolutely precluded from issuing Fragments of 

 Thinking for the Unthinkiug Classes. Our subject restrains this ; and if it 

 did not, yet there are some of us who are so constituted that it is a necessity 

 for us to be thorough, even in the enunciation of a principle, or the expression 

 of the briefest proposition. 



But further than this : If there be one thing more than another which 

 wins the philosophic theologian to the lecture-room of the physical-experi- 

 mentalist, it is the common love of truth " which makes them brethren ; 

 and if in any case this be questionable — if the love of truth " turn out, on 

 either side, to be a love of experiment, or of a priori prejudice, a thinker 

 finds himself very soon in uncongenial society. The professed "love of 



* See note, page 136. 



