"Joy and grief are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine."
Blake.
"All things are touched with melancholy,
Born of the secret soul's mistrust
To feel her fair ethereal wings
Weighed down with vile degraded dust.
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy."
Thomas Hood.
The armies of Faith and Science, instead of fighting side by side, too often oppose each other, and as the Archbishop of York remarked in his speech at the last meeting of the Christian Evidence Society, "The undue disposition on the part of Science to come into conflict with Religion, stirs up, on the part of Religion and religious men, a disposition to quarrel with Science." Indeed we all deeply need more solemn feelings of our own littleness, and the greatness of our Almighty Creator.
"Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be searched out by saucy looks."
Shakspere.
All the energies of nature are the results of Divine operations flowing from the fountain of life, and all the forces of nature are the forces of life.
"Science has a foundation, and so has Religion: let them unite their foundations, and the basis will be broader, and they will be two compartments of one great fabric reared to the glory of God."—M'Cosh.
"Science and Revelation are mutually, though gradually, clearing each other; but as a little warmth of the rising sun only calls up the very mists which are to be dissipated by its more powerful shining, so a vague and chilling popular unbelief is to be dispelled, not by withholding knowledge, but by shedding abroad all possible light. Christianity has one most dangerous mental foe, and that is ignorance." Ignorance is the parent of Atheism; but we should carefully distinguish between "sinful doubt" and candid inquiry, the former of which generally arises from a too great love of, and belief in, our own mental powers.
"Sinful doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt them."
Shakspere.