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books of the Jews. Whether we choose to say that those books 
contain a supernatural revelation or not, there the conception 
is, which Dr. Tyndall does not notice in his first passages. Its 
appearance as an item of belief is not accounted for by the 
explanations just given. While religious heathens attributed 
all things to deified men — and non-religious heathens to innate 
and inseparable potency in the atoms of matter — the children of 
Israel ascribed all things to One Spiritual Being — absolute, 
infinite, eternal. This belief has come down like the other 
beliefs, and somehow it has commanded the assent and accept- 
ance of the most intelligent and highly cultured of the most 
civilized races of the Christian ages. I admit that this belief 
has not always been clearly apprehended or carefully stated. I 
admit that religious communities have often held it ignorantly, 
expressed it grossly, and defended it foolishly. But the same 
may be said of any and every subject known to mankind, — yes, 
even of scientific subjects. Many supposed scientific facts 
having been proved to be fictions ; many scientific theories 
having no better foundation than had the Ptolemaic system of 
astronomy. Nay, is not science itself — its whole array of facts 
and cyclopaedia of results — a simple proof of the tremendous 
cost of knowledge and the fearful penalties of ignorance ? I 
will admit more : that even now the best-trained religious minds 
find it a very difficult thing to speak in fitting terms of the God 
in whom they believe. They strive, and seldom successfully, to 
do so ; human thought fails — and much more human words. 
But it is the business of a leading scientist to deal with the 
highest and best thought of religious men, not with the lowest 
and worst ; and it is his business, also, to endeavour to seize 
their real meanings, — meanings too often, alas, distorted rather 
than revealed, by the imperfect medium of language in which 
they have to be. embodied. 
These admissions made, and this affirmation of the duty of 
a professed leader of science set forth, I think it unnecessary to 
notice the vein of scorn which runs through Dr. TvndalPs 
address, aimed against the cosmical ideas of religious people, 
except to say that it savours of the very spirit of intolerance 
which he ascribes to them. A fair and natural remark would 
be : “ It is your business as a student of the physical universe 
to improve those ideas, and all truly Christian men will gladly 
welcome your facts, while eagerly helping to kill the spirit of 
bigotry which, as you show them, is not confined to religious 
breasts only.” 
The universe a fact — nature real and knowable — what of its 
“first beginnings”? What of a First Cause? if, as Dr. Tyndall 
