Town Geology | Page 8

of mere "order," which means
organised brute force and military despotism. And, after that, what can
come, save anarchy, and decay, and social death?
What else?--unless there be left in the nation, in the society, as the salt
of the land, to keep it all from rotting, a sufficient number of wise men
to form a true working aristocracy, an aristocracy of sound and rational
science? If they be strong enough (and they are growing stronger day
by day over the civilised world), on them will the future of that world
mainly depend. They will rule, and they will act--cautiously we may
hope, and modestly and charitably, because in learning true knowledge
they will have learnt also their own ignorance, and the vastness, the
complexity, the mystery of nature. But they will be able to rule, they
will be able to act, because they have taken the trouble to learn the facts
and the laws of nature. They will rule; and their rule, if they are true to
themselves, will be one of health and wealth, and peace, of prudence
and of justice. For they alone will be able to wield for the benefit of
man the brute forces of nature; because they alone will have stooped, to
"conquer nature by obeying her."
So runs my dream. I ask my young readers to help towards making that
dream a fact, by becoming (as many of them as feel the justice of my
words) honest and earnest students of Natural Science.
But now: why should I, as a clergyman, interest myself specially in the
spread of Natural Science? Am I not going out of my proper sphere to
meddle with secular matters? Am I not, indeed, going into a sphere out
of which I had better keep myself, and all over whom I may have
influence? For is not science antagonistic to religion? and, if so, what
has a clergyman to do, save to warn the young against it, instead of
attracting them towards it?
First, as to meddling with secular matters. I grudge that epithet of
"secular" to any matter whatsoever. But I do more; I deny it to anything
which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most

insignificant atom of dust. To those who believe in God, and try to see
all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot be
secular. It must be divine; I say, deliberately, divine; and I can use no
less lofty word. The grain of dust is a thought of God; God's power
made it; God's wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or qualities it may
possess; God's providence has put it in the place where it is now, and
has ordained that it should be in that place at that moment, by a train of
causes and effects which reaches back to the very creation of the
universe. The grain of dust can no more go from God's presence, or flee
from God's Spirit, than you or I can. If it go up to the physical heaven,
and float (as it actually often does) far above the clouds, in those higher
strata of the atmosphere which the aeronaut has never visited, whither
the Alpine snow-peaks do not rise, even there it will be obeying
physical laws which we term hastily laws of Nature, but which are
really the laws of God: and if it go down into the physical abyss; if it be
buried fathoms, miles, below the surface, and become an atom of some
rock still in the process of consolidation, has it escaped from God, even
in the bowels of the earth? Is it not there still obeying physical laws, of
pressure, heat, crystallisation, and so forth, which are laws of God- -the
will and mind of God concerning particles of matter? Only look at all
created things in this light--look at them as what they are, the
expressions of God's mind and will concerning this universe in which
we live--"the Word of God," as Bacon says, "revealed in facts"- -and
then you will not fear physical science; for you will be sure that, the
more you know of physical science, the more you will know of the
works and of the will of God. At least, you will be in harmony with the
teaching of the Psalmist: "The heavens," says he, "declare the glory of
God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. There is neither
speech nor language where their voices are not heard among them." So
held the Psalmist concerning astronomy, the knowledge of the heavenly
bodies; and what he says of sun and stars is true likewise of the flowers
around our feet, of which the greatest Christian poet of modern times
has said--
To me the meanest flower that grows may give Thoughts