iversalist church.
He enumerated some of the dangers that threaten us: one was 'The
doctrines of scientists,' and he named Tyndale, Huxley, and Spencer. I
was most surprised at his fear of these men. Can the study of truth do
harm? Does not every true scientist seek only to know the truth? And in
our deep ignorance of what is truth, shall we dread the search for it?

"I hold the simple student of nature in holy reverence; and while there
live sensualists, despots, and men who are wholly self-seeking, I cannot
bear to have these sincere workers held up in the least degree to
reproach. And let us have truth, even if the truth be the awful denial
of the good God. We must face the light and not bury our heads in the
earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on,
will reveal new ways in which God works, and bring to us deeper
revelations of the wholly unknown.

"The physical and the spiritual seem to be, at present, separated by an
impassable gulf; but at any moment that gulf may be overleaped--possibly
a new revelation may come....

"April, 1878. I called on Professor Henry at the Smithsonian Institute.
He must be in his eightieth year; he has been ill and seems feeble, but
he is still the majestic old man, unbent in figure and undimmed in eye.

"I always remember, when I see him, the remark of Dorothy Dix, 'He is
the truest man that ever lived.'

"We were left alone for a little while, and he introduced the subject of
his nearness to death. He said, 'The National Academy has raised
$40,000, the interest of which is for myself and family as long as any
of us live [he has daughters only], and in view of my death it is a
great comfort to me.' I ventured to ask him if he feared death at all.
He said, 'Not in the least; I have thought of it a great deal, and have
come to feel it a friend. I _cherish_ the belief in immortality; I have
suffered much, at times, in regard to that matter.' Scientifically
considered, only, he thought the probability was on the side of
continued existence, as we must believe that spirit existed independent
of matter.

"He went to a desk and pulled out from a drawer an old copy of
'Gregory's Astronomy,' and said, 'That book changed my whole life--I
read it when I was sixteen years old; I had read, previously, works of
the imagination only, and at sixteen, being ill in bed, that book was
near me; I read it, and determined to study science.' I asked him if a
life of science w