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LIBRARY

STATE OF THE CASE,

"Je voudrais faire quelque progrès nouveau dans la connaissance des choses divines."-EMILE SAISSET.

THE age in which we live reasonably boasts of great growth
in knowledge and useful application of knowledge. This
breadth and accuracy, unless we exercise due care, will
enrich the race at expense of the individual. It is no longer
possible for a single mind to occupy the whole domain of
investigation. The student must limit his labours to one
field of science; to one tree, branch, or even leaf of know-
ledge; if he will add to the intellectual store of mankind.
That is a noble devotion which abandons vast mines of
research, and concentrates every energy to carry one line
of inquiry to the furthest limit. Such devotion, for the sake
of accuracy and discovery, involves great sacrifices: not
the least, though often overlooked, is a narrowing of the
student's own intellectual and emotional nature.
The eye,
turned continually upon objects near and small, loses the
faculty of far-seeking and wide discernment. The mind
wholly given to one study loses power and discrimination as
to outlying provinces of thought.

Nowhere is the evil effect so plainly seen as in those students of physical science the minuteness and mechanical nature of whose investigations render them like the carpenter who will have everything made of wood, or as the blacksmith who recommends iron. Their leaders must be pained to find that having scorned the statements of Scripture as rendering the work of creation too man-like, they are reduced to the absurdity of asserting that ultimate atoms turn the key of every mystery, and possess the potency of all terrestrial life.

B

Same religious teachers err by another kind of onesidedness. Knowing but little of physics, they use exploded No wonder arguments to maintain untenable positions. that the Sacred Cause, which they endeavour to champion, is imperilled rather than vindicated.

Such an unnatural separation, on the one hand, of Science from Religion and holy sentiment, is a surrender, by the implicated physicists, of an honourable position ; and reduces Science to an occupation of sheer curiosity and selfish utilitarianism. A separation, on the other hand, of Religion. from Science, gives our clergy the impossible task of explaining the universe without the aid of positive knowledge; and leads to hard dogmatism, oppressive to the spirit of a true student. As a result, the verities of Divine Revelation, true independently of belief or unbelief, are not handled with sufficient force to obtain the conviction of scientific intellect; nor so pleasingly set forth as to win the affections of a devout will. Partly owing to this, truths, which the greatest of mankind have thoroughly investigated and accepted, are now refused by the unspiritual; who, not being able to detect the soul by physical analysis, nor to find God by means of microscope and telescope, assert— "The existence of the Soul, the Being of God, the Divine other foundation than the devout Revelation, have no

aspirations of believers."

There are, specially in the medical profession, men with keen unconquerable love for scientific study; who, not possessing special religious convictions, not having any particular expectation of pecuniary advantage, devote themselves, "heart and soul," with intense unselfish devotion, to the study of their own science. These men save life and beautify it, their love of science is sacred, and it may be that with them "laborare est orare." The statement of Dr. Ernest Henry Starling is very pleasing, that the discovery of anesthetics and the improved treatment of wounds consequent on the researches of Lord Lister, have completely abolished pain from physiological laboratories.

"The thought of their laborious years doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be bless'd:

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Not for this we raise
The songs of thanks and praise ;

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