The vicar then introduced Dr Prosser, remarking that he was sure that those who had heard him lecture last April would be delighted to listen to his voice again. The doctor, who was vociferously cheered, stood forward and said:—
“I have the greatest pleasure in being with you, dear friends, to-day. I have heard a great deal of what has been going on from your excellent vicar, and have now listened with the deepest interest to the characteristic speeches which have just been made. I shall be glad now to say a few words, and to add my testimony to the importance of certain truths which need enforcing in our day. Thomas Bradly is to follow me, and I feel sure that his homely eloquence and plain practical good sense will be a fit termination to this most truly interesting meeting.
“What I would now urge upon you all is this,—the unspeakable importance in these days of grasping realities instead of hunting shadows. I have been, I fear, till lately, more or less of a shadow-hunter myself. I used to sympathise with the cry,—
“‘For names and creeds let senseless bigots fight—
He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’
“But I don’t think this now. We men of science are too apt to deal with abstractions, and to follow out favourite theories, till we are in danger of forgetting that we have hearts and souls as well as heads; that, as has been beautifully said, ‘The heart has its arguments as well as the understanding;’ and that, as God’s Word tells us, ‘The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ I am more and more strongly persuaded of this every day. We are living in times of immense energy and surprising intellectual activity, but, at the same time, are surrounded with unrealities or half-realities. We want something to grasp that will never deceive us, never fly from us. Anything—like mere vague generalities will never satisfy beings constituted as you and I are; and thus it is that we cannot do without something real in our religion, something definite. We want to come into real communion with a personal Being, whom we can consciously, though spiritually, approach, love, and reverence. We want a real person such as ourselves, and yet infinitely above ourselves; and such an one we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour—one who is like us as man, yet infinitely above us as God—one who can smile on us, because he is human, and can watch over us, guide us, and bear with us, because he is divine.
“Be sure of this, dear friends,—and I am speaking to you now as persons of intelligence, who can thoughtfully weigh what I say,—science can never be true science, knowledge can never be real knowledge which sets aside the God who is the fountain of all truth and every kind of truth. If we are to learn anything aright and thoroughly, we must learn it as believers in Him in whom ‘we live, and move, and have our being,’ who has given us all our faculties, and placed us in the midst of that universe all of whose laws are of his own imposing and maintaining. Depend upon it, you cannot acquire any sound and useful knowledge aright, if you try and keep up an independence of that God who is the author and upholder of all things physical and spiritual. At the Cross we must learn the only way of peace for our souls; and, in dependence on the grace and wisdom of Him who is in every sense the Light of the world, we must seek to make real advance in every field of knowledge, content to know and feel our own ignorance, and thankful to gain light in all our investigations from Him who can at the same time baffle the searchings of the wisest, and unfold to the humble yet patient and persevering inquirer treasures of knowledge and wisdom otherwise unattained and unattainable. In a word, as the whole universe belongs to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and was made by him what it is, if we would pursue any branch of knowledge, any science whatever, with the truest and fullest prospect of success, we must do it as Christians, as in dependence on Him ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’
“This, I am well aware, is not the tendency of the age, which is rather to seek knowledge apart from God, and to treat science and religion as distant and cold acquaintances, instead of loving and inseparable friends.—But now I gladly give way to my old friend Thomas Bradly, who has, I know, something to tell us which will do us good, if we will only carry it away with us.”
“Yes,” said Bradly, slowly and thoughtfully, as he took the speaker’s place, by the vicar’s invitation, “it is true, dear friends, that I have something of moment to say to you. This has truly been a happy day to me so far. I rejoice in the presence of so many dear friends; and it is indeed kind of Dr Prosser to be at the trouble to come among us, and give us those words of weighty counsel which we have just heard. I have listened to the other speeches also with very great satisfaction. I think we’re got on the right foundation, and we only wants to stick there.
“Well now, dear friends, I’ve got something to show you here. Look at this little book; it ain’t got much outward show about it, but it’s got the old-fashioned words of God’s truth inside. It was my mother’s Bible afore she were married, and a blessed book it were to her, and to her children too. I think I can see her now, sitting of a summer’s evening, after the day’s work were done, under an old apple tree, on a seat as my father had made for her. She would get us children round her, and be so happy with her little Bible, reading out its beautiful stories to us, and telling us of the love of Jesus. She always read the Bible to us with a smile, unless we’d any of us been doing anything wrong, and then she read to us what the Bible tells us about sin, and she looked grave indeed then.
“Well, when she died, the little book were left to our Jane—her mother wished it so—and Jane prized it more than gold, and used to mark her favourite verses with a line of red-ink under ’em; it were her way, and helped to bring the passages she wished particularly to remember more quickly to her eye. But the Lord was ordering and overruling this marking for his own special purposes. Look at the book again; you can many of you see the red lines.