"These were his words as well as I can recollect; and, looking at that good and great man, I thought I had never seen a countenance which so impressed me with the characteristic of perfect unworldliness. We know how his life proved that this rare qualification was indeed his."
"Childlike simplicity:" "unworldliness." Where was the tree rooted that bore such beautiful blossoms? Faraday had learnt in the school of Christ to become "a little child," and he loved not the world because the love of the Father was in him.
We have a charming glimpse of this in an extract which Professor Tyndall has given from an old paper in which he wrote his impressions after one of his earliest dinners with the philosopher:—"At two o'clock he came down for me. He, his niece, and myself formed the party. 'I never give dinners,' he said; 'I don't know how to give dinners; and I never dine out. But I should not like my friends to attribute this to a wrong cause. I act thus for the sake of securing time for work, and not through religious motives as some imagine.' He said grace. I am almost ashamed to call his prayer a 'saying' of grace. In the language of Scripture, it might be described as the petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of His Son, and who with absolute trust asked a blessing from his father. We dined on roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and potatoes, drank sherry, talked of research and its requirements, and of his habit of keeping himself free from the distractions of society. He was bright and joyful—boylike, in fact, though he is now sixty-two. His work excites admiration, but contact with him warms and elevates the heart. Here, surely, is a strong man. I love strength, but let me not forget the example of its union with modesty, tenderness, and sweetness, in the character of Faraday."
But his religion deserves a closer attention. When an errand-boy, we find him hurrying the delivery of his newspapers on a Sunday morning so as to get home in time to make himself neat to go with his parents to chapel: his letters when abroad indicate the same disposition; yet he did not make any formal profession of his faith till a month after his marriage, when nearly thirty years of age. Of his spiritual history up to that period little is known, but there seem to be good grounds for believing that he did not accept the religion of his fathers without a conscientious inquiry into its truth. It would be difficult to conceive of his acting otherwise. But after he joined the Sandemanian Church, his questionings were probably confined to matters of practical duty; and to those who knew him best nothing could appear stronger than his conviction of the reality of the things he believed. In order to understand the life and character of Faraday, it is necessary to bear in mind not merely that he was a Christian, but that he was a Sandemanian. From his earliest years that religious system stamped its impress deeply on his mind, it surrounded the blacksmith's son with an atmosphere of unusual purity and refinement, it developed the unselfishness of his nature, and in his after career it fenced his life from the worldliness around, as well as from much that is esteemed as good by other Christian bodies. To this small self-contained sect he clung with warm attachment; he was precluded from Christian communion or work outside their circle, but his sympathies at least burst all narrow bounds. Thus the Abbé Moigno tells us that at Faraday's request he one day introduced him to Cardinal Wiseman. The interview was very cordial, and his Eminence did not hesitate frankly and good-naturedly to ask Faraday if, in his deepest conviction, he believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic, and apostolical, was shut up in the little sect in which he bore rule. "Oh no!" was the reply; "but I do believe from the bottom of my soul that Christ is with us." There were other points, too, in his character which reflected the colouring of the religious school to which he belonged. Thus, while humility is inseparable from a Christian life, there is a special phase of that virtue bred of those doctrines which teach that all our righteousness must be the unmerited gift of another: these doctrines are strongly insisted upon in the Sandemanian Church, and this humility was acquired in an intense degree by its minister. Again, while all Christians deplore the terrible amount of folly and sin in the world, most recognize also a large amount of good, and believe in progressive improvement; but small communities are apt to take gloomy views, and so did Faraday, notwithstanding his personal happiness, and his firm conviction that "there is One above who worketh in all things, and who governs even in the midst of that misrule to which the tendencies and powers of men are so easily perverted."
In writing to Professor Schönbein and a few other kindred spirits he would turn naturally enough from scientific to religious thoughts, and back again to natural philosophy, but he generally kept these two departments of his mental activity strangely distinct; yet of course it was well known that the Professor at Albemarle Street was one of that long line of scientific men, beginning with the savants of the East, who have brought to the Redeemer the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of their adoration.
But the peculiar features of Faraday's spiritual life are matters of minor importance: the genuineness of his religious character is acknowledged by all. We have admired his faithfulness, his amiability of disposition, and his love of justice and truth; how far these qualities were natural gifts, like his clearness of intellect, we cannot precisely tell; but that he exercised constant self-control without becoming hard, ascended the pathway of fame without ever losing his balance, and shed around himself a peculiar halo of love and joyousness, must be attributed in no small degree to a heart at peace with God, and to the consciousness of a higher life.