save anarchy,
and decay, and social death?

What else?--unless there be left in the nation, in the society, as
the salt of the land, to keep it all from rotting, a sufficient
number of wise men to form a true working aristocracy, an aristocracy
of sound and rational science? If they be strong enough (and they
are growing stronger day by day over the civilised world), on them
will the future of that world mainly depend. They will rule, and
they will act--cautiously we may hope, and modestly and charitably,
because in learning true knowledge they will have learnt also their
own ignorance, and the vastness, the complexity, the mystery of
nature. But they will be able to rule, they will be able to act,
because they have taken the trouble to learn the facts and the laws
of nature. They will rule; and their rule, if they are true to
themselves, will be one of health and wealth, and peace, of prudence
and of justice. For they alone will be able to wield for the benefit
of man the brute forces of nature; because they alone will have
stooped, to "conquer nature by obeying her."

So runs my dream. I ask my young readers to help towards making that
dream a fact, by becoming (as many of them as feel the justice of my
words) honest and earnest students of Natural Science.

But now: why should I, as a clergyman, interest myself specially in
the spread of Natural Science? Am I not going out of my proper
sphere to meddle with secular matters? Am I not, indeed, going into
a sphere out of which I had better keep myself, and all over whom I
may have influence? For is not science antagonistic to religion?
and, if so, what has a clergyman to do, save to warn the young
against it, instead of attracting them towards it?

First, as to meddling with secular matters. I grudge that epithet of
"secular" to any matter whatsoever. But I do more; I deny it to
anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most
insignificant atom of dust. To those who believe in God, and try to
see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot be
secular. It must be divine; I say, deliberately, divine; and I can
use no less lofty word. The grain of dust is a thought of God; God's
power made it; God's wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or
qualities it may possess; God's providence has put it in the place
where it is now, and has ordained that it should be in that place at
that mome