is irreligious.  Take a humble simile.  Suppose a writer were daily saluted with praises couched in superlative language.  Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, the beauty of his works, were the constant topics of the eulogies addressed to him.  Suppose those who unceasingly uttered these eulogies on his works were content with looking at the outsides of them; and had never opened them, much less tried to understand them.  What value should we put upon their praises?  What should we think of their sincerity?  Yet, comparing small things to great, such is the conduct of mankind in general, in reference to the Universe and its Cause.  Nay, it is worse.  Not only do they pass by without study, these things which they daily proclaim to be so wonderful; but very frequently they condemn as mere triflers those who give time to the observation of Nature—­they actually scorn those who show any active interest in these marvels.  We repeat, then, that not science, but the neglect of science, is irreligious.  Devotion to science, is a tacit worship—­a tacit recognition of worth in the things studied; and by implication in their Cause.  It is not a mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed in actions—­not a mere professed respect, but a respect proved by the sacrifice of time, thought, and labour.

Nor is it thus only that true science is essentially religious.  It is religious, too, inasmuch as it generates a profound respect for, and an implicit faith in, those uniformities of action which all things disclose.  By accumulated experiences the man of science acquires a thorough belief in the unchanging relations of phenomena—­in the invariable connection of cause and consequence—­in the necessity of good or evil results.  Instead of the rewards and punishments of traditional belief, which people vaguely hope they may gain, or escape, spite of their disobedience; he finds that there are rewards and punishments in the ordained constitution of things; and that the evil results of disobedience are inevitable.  He sees that the laws to which we must submit are both inexorable and beneficent.  He sees that in conforming to them, the process of things is ever towards a greater perfection and a higher happiness.  Hence he is led constantly to insist on them, and is indignant when they are disregarded.  And thus does he, by asserting the eternal principles of things and the necessity of obeying them, prove himself intrinsically religious.

Add lastly the further religious aspect of science, that it alone can give us true conceptions of ourselves and our relation to the mysteries of existence.  At the same time that it shows us all which can be known, it shows us the limits beyond which we can know nothing.  Not by dogmatic assertion, does it teach the impossibility of comprehending the Ultimate Cause of things; but it leads us clearly to recognise this impossibility by bringing us in every direction to boundaries we cannot cross.  It realises to us in a way which nothing else can, the littleness