Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/639

Rh free scope as it stretches out into the infinitudes of time, space, and power, carrying the mind on, bound by bound, through the limitless expanse, until even the imagination refuses to follow, and fairly quails before the mighty form of the Infinite, which rises to confront it! Remember now that your forefathers, of only a few centuries back, saw there nothing but a solid dome hemming in the earth and skies, and that you are able to look upon this grand spectacle only because great minds have lived who have opened your intellectual eyes; and then answer me, is not this result worth all the labor, all the sacrifice, all the treasure, it has cost?

Every educated man, who has not sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, lives a grander and a nobler life, because the great astronomers have thought and taught, and this elevation of human life is the greatest achievement of which man can boast. Before it all material conquests appear of little worth, and the lustre of all military or civil glory grows dim. Cherish this intellectual life; foster it; sustain it; do what you can by your own spirit and influence, and, if you are blest with riches, give of your abundance to support and encourage those who, by genius, talent, and devotion, will widen the intellectual kingdom. Be assured you will thus help to confer an inestimable boon on your race and on your country; and the influence for good will not be felt by the intellectual life of the nation only; that corruption which is now festering at the heart of our body politic, and threatening its destruction, can in no way be fought and conquered so effectually as by keeping constantly before the nation noble and high ideals; for, where the higher life is cherished and honored, the mercenary and sensual motives of action, which both invite and shield corruption, lose much of their force and power.

But you may tell me that there is a life higher than the intellectual life, and that I have ascribed to science and scholarship influences which come only from a source which I have forgotten, or left out of view. My friends, all truth is one and inseparable, and I have therefore made no-distinction in this address between the truths of science and the truths of religion. That grand old word knowledge, as I have used it, includes both, and in just the proportion that you reverence religion, you must reverence also, true science. All truth is God's truth, and, in praying for the coming of his kingdom, you certainly do not expect that Nature will be divorced from Grace. If the truths of religion required a special revelation, it must be expected that they would transcend human intelligence. These very conditions imply conflict, but the conflict comes not from the knowledge, but from the ignorance and conceit of men; and the only proper attitude for the devout scholar is 'to labor and to wait.' And what more wonderful confirmation could we have of the essential unity of the two phases of truth than is to be found in the fact that the characteristic of science, which I have been endeavoring to illustrate in this