Tyndall has preserved another vivid reminiscence of Faraday’s inner life, which he wrote down after one of the earliest dinners which he had in the Royal Institution.

“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.”

There is a story told by the Abbé Moigno that one day at Faraday’s request he introduced him to Cardinal Wiseman. In the frank interview which followed, the Cardinal did not hesitate to ask Faraday whether, in his deepest conviction, he believed all the Church of Christ, holy, catholic, and apostolic, was shut up in the little sect in which he was officially an elder. “Oh, no!” was Faraday’s reply; “but I do believe from the bottom of my soul that Christ is with us.”

ELDERSHIP INTERRUPTED.

The course of Faraday’s eldership was, however, interrupted. It was expected of an elder that he should attend every Sunday. One Sunday he was absent. When it was discovered that his absence was due to his having been “commanded” to dine with the Queen at Windsor, and that so far from expressing penitence, he was prepared to defend his action, his office became vacant. He was even cut off from ordinary membership. Nevertheless, he continued for years to attend the meetings just as before. He would even return from the provincial meetings of the British Association to London for the Sunday, so as not to be absent. In 1860 he was received back as an elder, which office he held again for about three years and a half, and finally resigned it in 1864.

It is doubtful whether Faraday ever attempted to form any connected ideas as to the nature or method of operation of the Divine government of the physical world, in which he had such a whole-souled belief. Newton has left us such an attempt. Kant in his own way has put forward another. So did Herschel; and so in our time have the authors of “The Unseen Universe.” To Faraday all such “natural theology” would have seemed vain and aimless. It was no part of the lecturer on natural philosophy to speculate as to final causes behind the physical laws with which he dealt. Nor, on the other hand, was it the slightest use to the Christian to inquire in what way God ruled the universe: it was enough that He did rule it.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

Faraday’s mental organisation, which made it possible for him to erect an absolute barrier between his science and his religion, was an unusual one. The human mind is seldom built in such rigid compartments that a man whose whole life is spent in analysing, testing, and weighing truths in one department of knowledge, can cut himself off from applying the same testing and inquiring processes in another department. The founder of the sect had taught them that the Bible alone, with nothing added to it or taken away from it by man, was the only and sufficient guide for the soul. Apparently Faraday never admitted the possibility of human flaw in the printing, editing, translation, collation, or construction of the Bible. He apparently never even desired to know how it compared with the oldest manuscripts, or what was the evidence for the authenticity of the various versions. Having once accepted the views of his sect as to the absolute inspiration of the English Bible as a whole, he permitted no subsequent question to be raised as to its literal authority. Tyndall once described this attitude of mind in his own trenchant way by saying that when Faraday opened the door of his oratory he closed that of his laboratory. The saying may seem hard, but it is essentially true. To few indeed is such a limitation of character possible: possibly it may be unique. We may reverence the frank single-minded simplicity of soul which dwelt in Faraday, and may yet hold that, whatever limitation was right for him, others would do wrong if they refused to bring the powers of the mind—God-given as they believe—to bear upon the discovery of truth in the region of Biblical research. Yet may none of them dream of surpassing in transparent honesty of soul, in genuine Christian humility, in the virtues of kindness, earnestness, and sympathetic devotion, the great and good man who denied himself that freedom.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Faraday’s usual place of work at bookbinding was a little room on the left of the entrance. (See the story of his visit there with Tyndall in after years, as narrated in Tyndall’s “Faraday,” p. 8.)