Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/407

Rh through this space! How small the wisdom obtained by a single life in its passage; and how small the known when compared with the unknown by the accumulation of the millions of lives through the art of printing in hundreds of years!

"How many questions press themselves upon us in these contemplations! Whence come we? Whither are we going? What is our final destiny? What the object of our creation? What mysteries of unfathomable depth environ us on every side! But after all our speculations, and an attempt to grapple with the problem of the universe, the simplest conception which explains and connects the phenomena is that of the existence of one spiritual Being, infinite in wisdom, in power, and all divine perfections; which exists always and everywhere; which has created us with intellectual faculties sufficient in some degree to comprehend his operations as they are developed in Nature by what is called 'science.' "

Prof. Henry here begins with Nature, and deduces from its study the fundamental conception of religion—the idea of a Divine Spiritual Ruler of the universe, who has made man capable of penetrating its secrets and understanding its laws by the faculty of reason applied to scientific investigation. Nature, God, religion, and science, are thus bound together in one grand synthetic and harmonized conception. In this view Prof. Henry represented the most advanced intelligence of his time, and how advanced was his view we can best appreciate by contrasting it with other states of mind in the theological sphere.

It is well known that, in the language of a recent writer, "the men of the first Christian generation, including the apostles and the writers of the New Testament, lived in the almost daily expectation of the Lord and the end of the world." The notion of the world's coming to an end was an easy one in a state of perfect ignorance of the nature of the world. When it was supposed to be flat and small, and stationary, and there was no such idea as that of the universe, and not the slightest conception of anything like order and stability in the constitution of sublunary things, there was certainly no reason why the world should not come to an end at almost any time. It was supposed to have been made in a somewhat hurried manner, not very long ago, and it was natural to think that it might terminate at almost any hour in a similar sudden way. And, as its creation was considered as belonging to theology, its extinction, it was supposed, would come by a theological catastrophe. The idea that the world might come to an end was made possible by the ignorance of the time, and as men knew nothing about its shape, magnitude, motions, relations, and antiquity, they could not be expected to know anything in favor of its duration. No blame can therefore be attached to the primitive Christians who were in daily expectation of the end of the world.

But when we pass over a period of eighteen hundred years and reach the nineteenth century, the case is different. It is not surprising that the early traditions should have long been tenaciously held in the sphere of theology, but it certainly is a matter of some amazement that a belief in the predicted destruction of the earth as the sequel of a theological programme could have been seriously entertained so late as the middle of the present century. Yet the sudden ending of mundane affairs in accordance with Scripture predictions was not only profoundly believed by multitudes, but the exact time was assigned and extensive preparations made for the grand event. The epidemic of Millerism spread over large parts of the country not many years ago, and, although the exact calculations were discredited, revised calculations took their place, and societies of "Second Adventists" in different parts of the country have kept alive the exhilarating prospect that the earth would soon be wrapped in conflagration, and, if not reduced to nothing, that the