Page:On Science, its Divine Origin, Operation, Use and End.pdf/43

Rh eternal bliss. But renovation of life, which is reformation and regeneration, is no sudden or instantaneousoperation, but is effected during every period of man’s life, from infancy, through youth and manhood, to old age. The process of science, then, in accomplishing this efi‘ect, is thus gradual and continual with man, manifesting itself, in infancy by the external forms of truth stored up in the memory; in youth and manhood, by an elevation of those forms into the intellectual mind, where they are seen and confirmed to be truths; and in old age, by the vivification of those forms through the influence of heavenly love and charity in the will, connecting them with the divine Source from which they originally descended. Thus science, like a minister of heaven, attends man through every stage of his existence, opening his mind gradually to the light of the eternal world, and enabling him to ascend, at the same time, into its blessed life, until, through the divine power with which it is ever aided, it conducts him safe to his final destination, in an everlasting conjunction with Jesus Christ, the supreme Love and the supreme Wisdom, in an eternity of bliss and peace, of security and protection, of holiness and happiness.

Such is the end of science, and such is the circle of its uses in promoting that end, each calculated to prove the divinity of its origin, the importance of its services, the variety of its objects, and the sublimity of its mediation in respect to man, whilst it conducts him from a state of ignorance, of incapacity, of defilement, and