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 afford 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 abandon, 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 Unthinking Classes. Our subject restrains this ; and if it 
did not, yet there are some of us v T ho 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. 
