visible form might
have changed, Faraday would still have possessed its elemental
constituents--awe, reverence, truth, and love.

It is worth enquiring how so profoundly religious a mind, and so great
a teacher, would be likely to regard our present discussions on the
subject of education. Faraday would be a 'secularist' were he now
alive. He had no sympathy with those who contemn knowledge unless it
be accompanied by dogma. A lecture delivered before the City
Philosophical Society in 1818, when he was twenty-six years of age,
expresses the views regarding education which he entertained to the
end of his life. 'First, then,' he says, 'all theological
considerations are banished from the society, and of course from my
remarks; and whatever I may say has no reference to a future state, or
to the means which are to be adopted in this world in anticipation of
it. Next, I have no intention of substituting anything for religion,
but I wish to take that part of human nature which is independent of
it. Morality, philosophy, commerce, the various institutions and
habits of society, are independent of religion, and may exist either
with or without it. They are always the same, and can dwell alike in
the breasts of those who, from opinion, are entirely opposed in the
set of principles they include in the term religion, or in those who
have none.

'To discriminate more closely, if possible, I will observe that we
have no right to judge religious opinions; but the human nature of
this evening is that part of man which we have a right to judge. And
I think it will be found on examination, that this humanity--as it may
perhaps be called--will accord with what I have before described as
being in our own hands so improvable and perfectible.'

In an old journal I find the following remarks on one of my earliest
dinners with Faraday: 'At two o'clock he came down for me. He, his
niece, and myself, formed the party, "I never give dinners," he said.
"I don't know how to give dinners, and I never dine out. But I should
not like my friends to attribute this to a wrong cause. I act thus
for the sake of securing time for work, and not through religious
motives, as some imagine." He said grace. I am almost ashamed to
call his prayer a "saying Of grace." In the language of Scripture, it
might be described as the petition of a son, into whose heart God had
sent the Spirit of His Son, and who with absolute trust asked a
blessing fr