to
soar in mid-air, to rush on our way unimpeded through the stony hearts
of mountains. We see the earth grow from a fire-ball to be the home of
man; we know its anatomy; we read its history; and we behold races of
animals which passed away ages before the eye of man looked forth upon
the boundless mystery and saw the shadow of the presence of the infinite
God. Better than the Greeks we know the history of Greece; than the
Romans that of Rome. Words that were never written have whispered to us
the dreams and hopes of people that perished and left no record; and the
more we have learned of the past the more clearly do we perceive how far
the present age surpasses all others in knowledge and in power.

The mighty movement by which this development has been caused, has not
slackened, but seems each day to gain new force; and the marvelous
changes, political, social, moral, intellectual, and physical, which
give character to the nineteenth century are but the prelude to a drama
which shall make all past achievements of our race appear weak and
contemptible. To imagine that our superiority is merely mechanical and
material is to fail to see things as they are. Greater individuals may
have lived than now are living, but never before has the world been
governed with so much wisdom and so much justice; and the power back of
our progress is intellectual, moral, and religious. Science is not
material. It is the product of intellect and will; and the great
founders of modern science, Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes,
Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Ampere, Liebig, Fresnel, Faraday, and Mayer,
were Christians. "However paradoxical it may sound," says
DuBois-Reymond, "modern science owes its origin to Christianity."

Since the course of events is left chiefly to the direction of natural
causes, and since science enables man to bend the stars, the lightning,
the winds, and the waves to his purposes, what shall resist the onward
march of those who are armed with such power? Since life is a warfare, a
struggle, how shall the ignorant and the thoughtless survive in a
conflict in which natural knowledge has placed in the hands of the wise
forces which the angels may not wield? Since the prosperity of the
Church is left subject to human influence, shall the Son of Man find
faith on earth when he comes if the most potent instrument God has given
to man is abandoned to those who know not Christ? Why should we who
reckon it a part of the gl