reverence. I will all but agree with the wise man who said that
reverence is the root of all virtues. But which child reverences
his father most? He who comes joyfully and trustfully to meet him,
that he may learn his father's mind, and do his will; or he who at
his father's coming runs away and hides, lest he should be beaten
for he knows not what? There is a scientific reverence, a reverence
of courage, which is surely one of the highest forms of reverence.
That, namely, which so reveres every fact, that it dare not overlook
or falsify it, seem it never so minute; which feels that because it
is a fact it cannot be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must
be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has
it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands
in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a
snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in
certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep
and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to
solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, thank God,
more and more common; which will produce, as it grows more common
still, fruit which generations yet unborn shall bless.

But as for that other reverence, which shuts its eyes and ears in
pious awe--what is it but cowardice decked out in state robes,
putting on the sacred Urim and Thummim, not that men may ask counsel
of the Deity, but that they may not? What is it but cowardice, very
pitiable when unmasked; and what is its child but ignorance as
pitiable, which would be ludicrous were it not so injurious? If a
man comes up to Nature as to a parrot or a monkey, with this
prevailing thought in his head--Will it bite me?--will he not be
pretty certain to make up his mind that it may bite him, and had
therefore best be left alone? It is only the man of courage--few