Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

There are some folks that say
They have found out a way
To be healthy and wealthy and wise:—
"Let your thoughts be but few,
Do as other folks do,
And never be caught by surprise.
Let your motto be follow the fashion,
But let other people alone;
Do not love them nor hate them nor care for their fate,
But keep a lookout for your own.
Then what though the world may run riot,
Still playing at catch who catch can,
You may just eat your dinner in quiet
And live like a sensible man."

In Nature I read quite a different creed,
There everything lives in the rest;
Each feels the same force
As it moves in its course,
And all by one blessing are blest.
The end that we live for is single,
But we labor not therefor alone;
For together we feel how by wheel within wheel
We are helped by a force not our own.
So we flee not the world and its dangers,
For He that has made it is wise;
He knows we are pilgrims and strangers,
And He will enlighten our eyes.

There probably was not a more nicely logical or more accurately reasoning intellect among all our nineteenth century scientists than that of the great mathematical electrician. He had none of the one-sidedness of the merely experimental scientist, nor, on the other hand, the narrowness of the exclusively speculative philosopher. With a power of analysis that was seldom equaled during the century, he had a power of synthesis that probably surpassed any of his contemporaries in any part of Europe. His ideas with regard to matter and its ultimate constitution are most suggestive. His suggestion of a strain in the ether as an explanation of electricity, thus enabling scientists to get away from the curious theories of the foretime which had required them to accept "action at a distance," that is, without any connecting medium, shows his power of following out abstruse ideas to definite practical conclusions. His religious life, then, will be a surprise to those who think that science leads men away from religion.

In the life of Clerk Maxwell, written by Campbell and Garnett,[34] there is a passage from his friend and sometime pastor, Guillemard, in which the details of his religious life are given so fully as scarcely to require any further gleaning of information in this regard.

"He was a constant, regular attendant at church, and seldom, if ever, failed to join in our monthly late celebration of Holy Communion, and he was a generous contributor to all our parish charitable institutions. But his illness drew out the whole heart and soul and spirit of the man; his firm and undoubting faith in the Incarnation and all its results; in the full sufficing of atonement; in the works of the Holy Spirit. He had gauged and fathomed all the schemes and systems of philosophy, and had found them utterly empty and unsatisfying—'unworkable' was his own word about them—and he turned with simple faith to the Gospel of the Saviour."

His faith was not disturbed at the near approach of death, but, on the contrary, seemed strengthened. His biographers tell the story of some of the expressions used to his friends during these last days, which furnish manifest proof of this. Some of these passages are so characteristic and so striking that they deserve to be in the note-book of those to whom the modern idea that science is opposed to religion or faith may sometimes have been a source of worry, or at least an occasion for argument. Here is a typical one of these passages:

"Mr. Colin Mackenzie has repeated to us two sayings of his during those last days, which may be repeated here: 'Old chap, I have read up many queer religions; there is nothing like the old thing, after all; and I have looked into most philosophical systems, and I have seen that none will work without a God.'"

It must not be imagined, because Clerk Maxwell was a deeply religious man, that, therefore, he was frigid or formal or extremely serious, or inclined to be puritanic with regard to the pleasures of life, or a fanatic in the matter of taking all the good-natured fun there might be in anything that turned up. He was far from over-serious, or what has been called, though not quite properly, ascetic; but, on the contrary, was often, indeed usually, the soul of the party with which he was at the moment. He had none at all of the self-centered interest of the narrow-minded, but had many friends, and was liked by all his acquaintances. His friends were enthusiastic about his kindness of heart and the thorough congeniality of his disposition. On this point, the sketch of him in the National Dictionary of Biography gives a charming picture:

"As a man, Maxwell was loved and honored by all who knew him; to his pupils, he was the kindest and most sympathetic of teachers; to his friends, he was the most charming of companions, brimful of fun, the life and soul of a Red Lion dinner at the British Association meetings; but in due season brave and thoughtful, with keen interest in problems that lay outside the domain of his own work, and throughout his life a stern foe to all that was superficial or untrue. On religious questions, his beliefs were strong and deeply rooted."

It may be added to this, that his religion had nothing of the merely formal about it, nor was it perfunctory. It entered into most of the details of his life, and the fact that, every day as the head of the house he led evening prayers for the family, was only a token of the deep hold which religion had upon his life. When his last illness came, though he knew that his end was not far off, and at his age sometimes the approach of death hampers religious faith because it does seem that longer life might be afforded to one who has been so faithful in his realization of the obligations of life, Clerk Maxwell's piety increased rather than diminished. A favorite expression of his during his last days was the verselet from Richard Baxter, which one would be apt to think of as frequently repeated by some feminine devotee rather than by the greatest mathematical scientist of the nineteenth century: