stooped, to "conquer nature by obeying her."

So runs my dream. I ask my young readers to help towards making that
dream a fact, by becoming (as many of them as feel the justice of my
words) honest and earnest students of Natural Science.

But now: why should I, as a clergyman, interest myself specially in
the spread of Natural Science? Am I not going out of my proper
sphere to meddle with secular matters? Am I not, indeed, going into
a sphere out of which I had better keep myself, and all over whom I
may have influence? For is not science antagonistic to religion?
and, if so, what has a clergyman to do, save to warn the young
against it, instead of attracting them towards it?

First, as to meddling with secular matters. I grudge that epithet of
"secular" to any matter whatsoever. But I do more; I deny it to
anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most
insignificant atom of dust. To those who believe in God, and try to
see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot be
secular. It must be divine; I say, deliberately, divine; and I can
use no less lofty word. The grain of dust is a thought of God; God's
power made it; God's wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or
qualities it may possess; God's providence has put it in the place
where it is now, and has ordained that it should be in that place at
that moment, by a train of causes and effects which reaches back to
the very creation of the universe. The grain of dust can no more go
from God's presence, or flee from God's Spirit, than you or I can.
If it go up to the physical heaven, and float (as it actually often
does) far above the clouds, in those higher strata of the atmosphere
which the aeronaut has never visited, whither the Alpine snow-peaks