THE GOSPEL OF CHRISTIANITY
AND THE
GOSPEL OF FREETHOUGHT.
"I will not inquire," once said the Bishop of Peterborough, speaking to a large audience of Christians, "I will not inquire whether this gospel be true or false; I will only ask if it be good news." His Lordship was speaking of what he was pleased to call the Gospel of Science. I am a little at a loss to know to what the Bishop alluded in this sentence; Science can scarcely be said to pretend that her work is to proclaim a gospel to the world; it is hers to gaze up into the illimitable skies, and to describe to the dwellers on our earth the marvellous worlds which roll through the pure ether; it is hers to peer into the illimitable depths of existence, revealed through the microscope, and to report to us her discoveries of the fairy-lands which are hidden from our rough eye-sight in the drop of water, or in the down on an insect's wing; it is hers to scan earth's surface, and to sound the depths of ocean; to read in the records of the rocks the age of our world, or to translate the language of the hidden sea-bottom into words intelligible to us; it is her glory to search after the laws which "bind Nature fast in fate," to discover facts, to proclaim them to mankind; but I never heard it claimed for Science that she pretended to be the evangelist to men of a new gospel, or that she ever waited to ask, ere declaring some freshly-discovered fact, "is it good news?" Science worships Truth alone; her steady gaze is fixed upon the Real; she never glances aside to follow expediency. Her work is to declare what is; she leaves to others to say what ought to be. Pure, serene, unwavering, Science walks through this world of ours; a grand, clear, dry, light—illumining all dark places; revealing, with equal lucidity, beautiful facts and ugly facts; as the rays of the sun fall alike on gorgeous palace and on
