Page:Science the handmaid of religion.djvu/18

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14
Motion an Effect of Life.

exist. Motion is the consequence of life. I move myself because I live; I am able to move other things because I live. In this sense the words of Pope are true:

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze.
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent,
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart,
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns.
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small:
He fills. He bounds, connects, and equals all."

In this sense the words of Paul may be interpreted: "In Him," by His will, through the means which He has supplied, "we live and move and have our being."

Nowhere, as far as we can see, do the deductions of science contravene the dogmas of religion. Rather, assuming these dogmas to be true, do we find both in the examples that we have alleged, and in many others, that science expresses her assent to them in terms almost borrowed from theology. We do not believe that the existence of God can be necessarily deduced from the teaching of physical science; but assuming that His existence is proved, and it is the office of theology, not of science, to prove the existence of God, we contend