'And I,' cried Virginia, with much greater tact, and rushing into the arms of her bishop, 'once more believe in heaven.'
NOTES.
'We now find it (the earth) not only swathed by an atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded with living things. The question is, how were they introduced?... The conclusion of science would undoubtedly be, that the molten earth contained within it elements of life, which grouped themselves into their present forms as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance encountered by this conception arise solely from the fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing in the human mind.... Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept without a murmur the derivation of animal and vegetable life from what we call inorganic nature. The conclusion of pure intellect points this way, and no other.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Is this egg (from which the human being springs) matter? I hold it to be so, as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go to the making of it into a man. Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so, undoubtedly. If there be anything besides matter in the egg, or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb, what is it?' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Matter I define as the mysterious thing by which all this is accomplished.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'I do not think that the materialist is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and motions explain everything. In reality, they explain nothing. PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'Who shall exaggerate the deadly influence on personal morality of those theologies which have represented the Deity ... as a sort of pedantic drill-sergeant of mankind, to whom no valour, no long-tried loyalty, could atone for the misplacement of a button of the uniform, or the misunderstanding of a paragraph of the "regulations and instructions"?' PROFESSOR HUXLEY.
'(To the Jesuit imagination) God is obviously a large individual, who holds the leading-strings of the universe, and orders its steps from a position outside it all.... According to it (this notion) the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clark Maxwell present to us under the guise of a manufacturer of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, that this annual increment to our population are "mostly fools," but little profit to the human heart seems derivable from this mode of regarding the divine operations.... In the presence of this mystery (the mystery of life) the notion of an atomic manufacturer and artificer of souls, raises the doubt whether those who entertain it were ever really penetrated by the solemnity of the problem for which they offer such a solution.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'I look forward, however, to a time when the strength, insight, and elevation which now visit us in mere hints and glimpses, during moments of clearness and vigour, shall be the stable and permanent possession of purer and mightier minds than ours—purer and mightier, partly because of their deeper knowledge of matter, and their more faithful conformity to its laws.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.