400 Science and the Bible. [April,
of science, to haunt the faithful and make them lose their equanimity ifl fruitless contest with the evil things !
A
few weeks since, we were in the laboratory of a friend, a good chemist
and a good Christian. He was so blind to the world's welfare as not to
know the evil of meddling with crucibles. So he took down one, put in
it a mineral containing the essential ingredient of clay, mixed with
it some pieces of a very soft inflammable metal, called sodium, and
placed the crucible in the fire. There was nothing specially
objectionable in the fire, as it was that of a common coal-stove. After
half an hour had passed, he found in the crucible, in place of the
material put in, a metal, as white nearly as tin, as hard as iron,
more malleable than silver, as sonorous as bell-metal, and not liable
to rust like iron or copper ; and, moreover, it was only half as heavy
as iron. It was, therefore, a metal combining most admirable qualities
with this remarkable levity. It had been called aluminium. He
has often performed the experiment; and, along with other believers in
nature, he sees from it that at least one third by weight of all our
clay-beds, granites, slates, and many other rocks, consists of this
strange metal aluminium. In his infatuation about the thing, he will
not admit that there is any harm in this dragging of aluminium out of
its hiding-place, or any proof about it that nature is hateful or false
beneath the surface. Indeed, he believes that in this very aluminium,
there is proof of the goodness and wisdom of God, and therefore cause
for renewed thankfulness for His gifts in nature.
Another
friend delights in using those suspicious-looking pieces of glass,
convex on one or both sides, called magnifying glasses. Instead of
being satisfied with the eyes which God gave him, he most daringly puts
such a glass to his own optics, and ventures to affirm that he sees
what was before invisible ; and, moreover, he confesses to no
compunctions for this prying spirit. He should, no doubt, be content
with the " honest, open face of nature;" but he has a curious way, and
will look. He sometimes puts a miserable little scale of a butterfly's
wing under his magnifying-
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