Now here are three men, to whom the world is probably more indebted than
to any other twenty men who have lived this century; indebted for
health, wealth, comfort, and enjoyment; indebted in kitchen, chamber,
drawing-room, counting-house; at home and abroad, by day and by night,
for gratification of the bodily and aesthetic taste. They were the
almoners of science. Practical men would have no tools to work with if
they did not receive them from those who, in abstraction, wrought in the
secluded heights of scientific investigation. It is base to be
ungrateful to the studious recluses who are the devotees of science.
These three men were Christians--simple, honest, devout Christians.
Faraday was a most "just and faithful knight of God," as Professor
Tyndall says. Sir William Siemens, it is said, was a useful elder in the
Presbyterian Church, and M. Pasteur, still living, is a reverent Roman
Catholic. Surely, when we find these men walking a lofty height of
science, higher than that occupied by any of their contemporaries, and
when we find these men sending down more enriching gifts to the lowly
sons of toil, and all the traders in the market places, and all seekers
of pleasure in the world, than any other scientific men, we must be safe
in the conclusion that to be an earnest Christian is not incompatible
with the highest attainments in science; and we can not find fault with
those who look with contempt upon the men who disdain Christianity, as
if it were beneath them, when it is remembered that among the rejecters
of our holy faith are no men to whom we have a right to be grateful for
any discovery that has added a dollar to the world's exchequer, or a
"ray to the brightness of the world's civilization.
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