[Footnote 140: Faraday's Lectures, pp. 105, 106.]
Is it safe to trust to what are considered to be indications of physical truth in a contest with moral evidence when the limits of physical knowledge are so floating and ill defined? Is it safe to erect barriers of supposed physical laws against the entrance of conviction regarding the truths of [{387}] revelation, when recent discovery has established so much that tells on the side of faith; when it has overturned so many old philosophical objections to it; when future discovery may, and seems likely to push the advantage of revelation still further into the domain of matter; when its indications have so many analogies to the doctrines of revealed truth? We are sure, at least, that future discovery can take from us no advantage which we at present derive from our knowledge of physical laws; it cannot fail widely to extend that advantage, by enlarging our acquaintance with the laws of nature.
X.
The natural termination of our reflections is the consideration of how short a way we yet see into the constitution of Nature; how far we are still from reaching the secrets of her vast operations. "After all, what do we see?" asks Admiral Smyth, in his Cycle of Celestial Objects. "Both that wonderful (stellar and nebular) universe, our own, and all which optical assistance has revealed to us, may be only the outlines of a cluster immensely more numerous. The millions of suns we perceive cannot comprise the Creator's universe. There are no bounds to infinitude; and the boldest views of the elder Herschel only placed us as commanding a ken whose radius is some 35,000 times longer than the distance of Sirius from us. Well might the dying Laplace exclaim, 'That which we know, is little; that which we know not, is immense.'" [Footnote 141] If, on the one hand, the discoveries of man in every department of material knowledge prove him to be in genius and intelligence only "a little lower than the angels," the boundless expanse of undiscovered worlds of investigation in his own and distant systems may well abate his enthusiasm, and make the greatest philosopher acknowledge that we as yet know only in part.
[Footnote 141: Vol. ii. Bedford Catalogue, p. 303.]
If so, partial knowledge of the laws of divine government can never be a safe or a philosophical guide to direct us in accepting or rejecting whatever comes to us claiming to be from the author and sustainer of that government, as revelation does. It can never be safe even as a preliminary guide; as an ultimate rule to test the value of revelation, it is totally disqualified. Till we know all, we can say nothing of what is possible or impossible, probable or the reverse. We can understand a person to whom the claims of revelation on his assent were new and strange, hesitating to accept it at all, till its credentials had been examined, and their evidence ascertained; but once that process is concluded, and a revelation established, we cannot understand a philosophical mind, in the elementary state of human knowledge, proceeding to select from the sum of revealed truth what seems to it intelligible, and accepting that, while rejecting whatever it considers to be the reverse; and maintaining that, because it cannot comprehend the mysterious things of revelation, therefore they cannot be from God. The only course, at once safe and philosophical, is to accept the whole of what is presented to us, without questioning its coincidence, or otherwise, with our previous views of what is likely or befitting; with our present notions of what is intelligible. To our limited knowledge it may seem in its doctrines unintelligible, imperfect, perhaps even contradictory: clouds of doubts may seem to hover over it; storms of conflicting principles and laws and assumptions, subversive, as we think, of the course of nature, may now rage about its path. But ascend the mountain-top, and the clouds are left far beneath; the roaring of the storm cannot be heard so high. Descend a little way into the deep, and the agitation of its surface ceases; silence and order and everlasting rest are established there. So the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of God, as manifested in his material government, or the higher we ascend in contemplating his modes [{388}] of action in nature, the nearer we shall approach to the vision of that perfect harmony and nice adjustment of every part of his vast creation, the full disclosure of which will recreate our intelligence in the light of his eternal beauty. It cannot be matter for wonder, then, that we rejoice at every new step in science, at every discovery of the secret powers of nature. We welcome the advance of physical science as a pioneer of the ultimately victorious progress of revealed truth, which shall demonstrate its intimate harmony with all that is known of the divine operations in the constitution of nature.
Meanwhile, we can afford to wait "till the day breaks and the shadows flee away." The veil will one day be withdrawn, and we shall see, eye to eye. Influences and agencies which it has not yet been given to man even to imagine, will then be disclosed, around us and within us; as when the eyes of the prophet's servant were opened, and he beheld his master surrounded with chariots of fire and horses of fire. Things will then be seen as they are, in the day of the manifestation of the sons of God. We can afford to wait for that day. We feel within us, already, much that we cannot account for, on natural principles; strong presentiments, and instincts of the supernatural and eternal order of things, are ever and ever crossing our path, stirring us with strange and sudden and mysterious power; disposing us for the revelations of the final day. A day of wonder; a day of benediction; but not for those who have refused to believe because they could not see, but for Christ's simple little ones, who were content to believe before, or without seeing; for whom it was enough that the great Creator had spoken to them by his Son, and since by his church; more than enough, that, even here, they could recognize the subservience of philosophy to faith; that they could perceive "in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within the veil."
THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE HYMN.
Copied from a print of the Blessed Virgin in a Catholic Village in Germany. Translated into English by E. T. Coleridge.