Somewhere (I wish I knew where, and I wish I knew from whose lips) I once found this immortal sentence: "A woman went through the streets of Alexandria, bearing a jar of water and a lighted torch, and crying aloud, 'With this torch I will burn up Heaven, and with this water I will put out Hell, that God may be loved for himself alone.'"
Science has dealt and delved patiently with the laws of matter. From Cuvier to Huxley, we have a long line of clear-eyed workers. The gravitating force between all molecules; the law of continuity; the inertial force of matter; the sublime facts of organic co-ordination and adaptation,--all these are recognized, analyzed, recorded, taught. We have learned that the true meaning of the word law, as applied to Nature, is not decree, but formula of invariable order, immutable as the constitution of ultimate units of matter. Order is not imposed upon Nature. Order is result. Physical science does not confuse these; it never mistakes nor denies specific function, organic progression, cyclical growth. It knows that there is no such thing as evasion, interruption, substitution.
When shall we have a Cuvier, a Huxley, a Tyndall for the immaterial world,--the realm of spiritual existence, moral growth? Nature is one. The things which we have clumsily and impertinently dared to set off by themselves, and label as "immaterial," are no less truly component parts or members of the real frame of natural existence than are molecules of oxygen or crystals of diamond. We believe in the existence of one as much as in the existence of the other. In fact, if there be balance of proof in favor of either, it is not in favor of the existence of what we call matter. All the known sensible qualities of matter are ultimately referable to immaterial forces,--"forces acting from points or volumes;" and whether these points are occupied by positive substance, or "matter" as it is usually conceived, cannot to-day be proved. Yet many men have less absolute belief in a soul than in nitric acid; many men achieve lifetimes of triumph by the faithful use and application of Nature's law--that is, formula of uniform occurrence--in light, sound, motion, while they all the while outrage and violate and hinder every one of those sweet forces equally hers, equally immutable, called by such names as truth, sobriety, chastity, courage, and good-will.