39J 
licentious or as malignant as himself. I need not remind yon 
of the multitude and variety of false religions which have these 
fancies for their basis. All such ghosts vanish at the sunrise 
of scientific truth. No man taught in modern science can any 
longer believe the statement of the Hindoo scriptures, that 
“ heavenly cows hurl the destructive thunderbolt^; nor, as 
the lightning flashes around him, will his fear embody itself in 
the picture of Thor wielding his mighty hammer, or Jupiter 
Tonans grasping a handful of lightnings. In the mighty 
electric discharge he sees only one manifestation of a force 
which pervades all Nature, and is convertible into other forces, 
the varied exponents of that one Supreme Will whose wisdom 
ordained and whose power sustains the whole. 
II. Evidences oe Christianity. — Natural Theology is not 
Christianity : its deductions may be perfectly true, and yet the 
Jewish and Christian Scriptures may be false. It seems to me, 
however, that the study of Nature has something also to say 
to this question, and that in more ways than one. 
The accordance of the character of God, as we find it de- 
scribed in the Bible, with that deduced from Nature, is itself an 
argument in favour of the truth of Revelation. 
The fact that the same difficulties which meet us in Revela- 
tion have their analogues in the world of sense, as shown by 
Bishop Butler and others, not merely serves to stop the mouths 
of objectors, but is of some value in establishing a common 
origin. 
But there is a more important issue. Science sweeps away 
the rubbish of superstition ; — is what we deem sacred truth 
likewise doomed to disappear? Facts seem against such a 
supposition. The present century, which has seen so wondrous 
an extension of physical science, is marked by an increase of 
religious earnestness ; and it seems to me that, notwithstanding 
some great and peculiar perils, our age has the healthy sign of 
a more intelligent and painstaking desire to arrive at the true 
meaning of the Word of God than characterized any earlier 
period of the Churches history. If, moreover, we turn from the 
effect of Natural Philosophy on an age to its effect on indi- 
viduals, do we really find that the pursuit of science overthrows 
the belief in the Divine origin of what is recorded in the sacred 
writings of the Jews and Christians ? By no means. A singu- 
larly large proportion of the highest men of science of this 
and preceding times have been devout believers, or, at least, 
have acknowledged the truth of the Scriptures ; while, if we 
descend to men of the second or third ranks, we find — at least 
in my experience — about the same proportion of Christians as 
in most other professions. It is true there are scientific men 
