Page:Science the handmaid of religion.djvu/14

10 of the Cause as He has always been known by His servants and worshippers.

We are using the word infinite here in its simple sense of boundless; and we contend that modern physical science, in a manner utterly unknown in time past, is revealing a boundlessness of the universe, which corresponds with the dogmas of religion respecting the Divine nature. The work, as it is better known, is shown to reveal more and more clearly the character of the artificer.

II. Again, that which theologians have called the "fulness" of God, his, seems to have its expression in the universe in a manner unknown to the ancients. For whereas it was certainly in former times the belief that there were certain empty parts of the universe, as the space, for example, between the earth and the moon and sun and stars, now it seems all but certain that a wonderful fluid pervades the whole of stellar space, a means of communication for the influence of light in its chemical, electrical, and vital effects; that is, a vehicle of mysterious force exists not in some places only, but in all places. There is no emptiness in the world; it is all fulness.

Thus our conception of the universe approximates to those conceptions of God which have all along held possession of the minds of men. Surely, as science raises the veil of the visible world in this manner, she may be regarded as the handmaid of religion, aiding, subordinately, religion in her