98 
implied that we had any notion of fathoming the purposes of 
the Divine mind. And yet by some notion of this kind, it 
seems as if we were to be debarred from all that most delight- 
ful search into nature which finds a God with mind, will, 
purpose, and power everywhere. And, again, I will not take 
the “ advanced thinker ” to illustrate this unhappy tendency. 
I will take a delightful book of Professor Tyndall's, written m 
order to give to young people and the less scientifically 
educated, clear ideas of the formation and movements ot 
glaciers, and many atmospheric and other phenomena * Any- 
thing more clear and luminous in its illustrations cannot well 
be conceived. Yet there comes in this sad obliquity, as I 
must needs think it. It appears that some writer upon 
whose book he had chanced^noted the fact of water becoming 
more dense and heavy down to a certain degree of cold, and 
then below that and to the freezing-point, growing lighter 
and rising as the process of crystallization proceeds ; so that, 
finally, whilst in summer the warmer water is found on the 
surface and the cooler water below, on the other hand in winter 
the frozen particles cover the lake while the warmer^ uncon- 
gealed particles occupy the depths. And the writer m ques- 
tion called upon his readers to admire this provision ot the 
Divine Wisdom, for that thus the fish which must have perished 
had the lake become frozen upwards from the bottom, are 
always able to live in water of congenial temperature when 
all is winter above them. Possibly the writer may have been 
inaccurate and unscientific in some of his language; possibly 
he may have erred in conceiving that this change of condition 
was peculiar to water, and that it was wrought with the final 
end that fish might not be destroyed. If so, all this ought to 
be set right. But was the idea wrong ? He who gave the 
water its properties ; He who made the creatures that inhabit 
the waters, did He not contemplate these results? Did He 
not know, did He not ordain, that this provision for His 
creatures should be part of the consequences which would 
follow from that which belongs, as Professor Tyndall points 
out, to the wonderful laws which regulate the sofidificationol 
other substances besides water. Yes, or else we limit His 
knowledge, and His wisdom, and we question His universal 
sovereignty. And, therefore, it was an unworthy thing to 
take the occasion, not to set right what was erroneous, but to 
rebuke as presumptuous and almost profane, any attempt to 
ascribe purpose in this matter to the Most High, or to discover 
what His purposes may be. And if our children are once 
* The Forms of Water , 314 — 324 . 
