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to the times after the Reformation, and the fall of the Eastern empire of Rome), of an age when travelling and running to and fro in the earth should be greatly multiplied. And when along with this increase in the stimulus and materials of science, science itself should also be increased.

That increase he might well expect, would be twofold, like that of a river, spreading over a wider surface, and including a greater number of individuals; and also piercing further into the secrets of nature than had ever been done before; so as not only to increase the intellectual wealth of the race, but to furnish human life with a large variety of inventions, ministering to the hourly comfort of mankind. It was probably a deep, secret conviction of the true fountain from which his work derived its inspiration, that led Bacon, in the confidence of expected success, to append to his work the following prayer :—

THE STUDENT'S PRAYER.

"To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications; that he remembering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness, for the alleviating of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any thing of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's." Amen.

The rash and ambitious hypotheses of many modern speculators in science, while they depart very widely from the strict and exact laws of Bacon's Inductive Philosophy, at the same time suggest the duty to all the friends of real science, as well as to every sincere disciple of Christ,

to offer up once more, with renewed earnestness, both for themselves, and for all their fellow students, this simple and striking prayer of Bacon, and to follow it by adopting his prayer as a writer.

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THE WRITER'S PRAYER.

Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst reviewed the works which thy hands had made, beheldest that every thing was very good, and thou didst rest with complacency in them. But man, reflecting on the works which he had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could by no means acquiesce in them. Wherefore if we labour in thy works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy sabbath. We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us; and that thou, by our hands, and also by the hands of others, on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind. These things we commend to thy everlasting love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us."

The true relation between Christian faith and genuine science, so often distorted or denied by sceptics or sciolists, is well defined by the same great philosopher in "Filum Labyrinthi," and in the Essay on Truth.

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"There cannot be a greater and more evident truth than this, that all knowledge, specially that of natural philosophy, tendeth highly to the magnifying of the glory of God, in his power, providence and benefits;...as engraven in his works, which, without this knowledge, are beheld but as through a veil. If the heavens in the body of them, do declare the glory of God to the eye, much more do they in the rule and decrees of them, declare it to the understanding. And another reason (for its culture) not inferior to this, is that the same natural philosophy principally among all human knowledge, doth give an excellent defence against both extremes in religion, superstition and infidelity; for both it freeth the mind from a number of weak fancies and imaginations, and raiseth it to acknowledge that to God' all things are possible.' To this purpose speaketh our Saviour in that first

Canon against heresies. .. 'Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God'... So He saw well that natural philosophy was of excellent use to the exaltation of the Divine Majesty. And what is admirable, being a remedy for superstitions, it is nevertheless a help to faith... 'What is truth?' asked Pilate. Certainly there are that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting. It is not only the difficulty and labour which men have in finding out of truth that doth bring lies into favour, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself ... This same truth is a naked and open daylight, which doth not shew the masks and mummeries of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-light. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, and false imaginations, it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and unpleasing to themselves? But howsoever these things are in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that inquiry for truth, which is the wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human

nature.

"The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason, and His Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of His Spirit. First, he breathed light on the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man, and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of His chosen. The poet (Lucretius), that beautified the sect that otherwise was inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, 'It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage-ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene: and to see the errors and wanderings, and mists and tempests in the vale below.' But so always that this prospect be with pity and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged even by those who practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and the mixture of falsehood is like alloy that embaseth it."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CHRISTIAN FAITH AND SCIENCE "FALSELY SO CALLED," IN THE LAST DAYS.

THE "Gospel of the Resurrection" by Dr Westcott contains two hundred pages developing the truths involved in, and growing out of, the Resurrection of Christ, which seem to me mainly true and beautiful. Still there are two drawbacks which do much to obscure the whole, and deprive it of practical power. The first is, the mistaken transfer to the Son, God Incarnate, of the transcendental conception of God, as a Being above time and space, with whom there is no past, present, or future, but simply an ETERNAL NOW. It is one main feature of the great mystery of godliness, that God has condescended, in the person of His Son, not only to be tempted like as we are, but subject, like His creatures, to the conditions of time and place. This is the very central truth of the Christian creed, that God the Son became incarnate at Bethlehem, a specific place, in the reign of Herod and Augustus, and during the government of Pilate, a specific time, in "the last days." To forget and overlook this great truth, instead of helping us to see deeper into sacred mysteries, spreads a veil of mist and confusion over the whole. The other drawback is the entire omission of the doctrine of a Judgment to come, and of the fundamental contrast between the

church and the world; and the double character of Christ as the "head of every man," and as the head of the body, the church. This is the truth which forms the woof of the whole message of Scripture, from the history of Cain and Abel to the last chapter of the Apocalypse. The entire pretermission of this great and fundamental truth, turns the whole discussion into a kind of luminous haze, where every part produces an effect, like that of the nebulous spaces in the milky way, instead of shedding a definite light, like that of the pole star or the southern cross.

The Appendix of thirty pages, is an attempt to proclaim a peace and friendship between Christian faith and the Positivism of M. Comte; an attempt as hopeless as it is suicidal, in a Professor of Divinity. I have read it with intense surprise and regret, but it would require a book to unfold fully the reasons of my entire dissent from that Appendix.

Positivism, in its fundamental law of progress, combines a fearful blasphemy, with a complete reversal of the very first principle of genuine philosophy. For that principle is the transition in our thoughts from momentary phenomena, to the causes, things, and persons, the real existences, mental or material, on which phenomena depend. The creed which denies the living God, and consigns Him to the 'moles and bats,' as a dream of the infancy of science, that must disappear with the daybreak, and then be replaced by M. Comte's NEW SUPREME BEING, COLLECTIVE HUMANITY, is exactly the creed of the last Antichrist, in that final stage in which he will have dropped every veil, or theological disguise, aud when openly, and no longer in a mystery, he “opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God,” 2 Thess. ii. 4.

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