o think that no field lies unexamined from which
such new material can hereafter come. The physical sciences which, by the
discovery of an order of nature and general laws of causation, have
heretofore suggested difficulties in reference to miraculous
interposition, and, by means of the discoveries in astronomy and geology,
have come into conflict with the ancient Hebrew cosmogony, are not likely
to suggest fresh ones distinct in kind from the past. If there be not
ground for discouragement in science, nor for doubting that the present
state of it, which seems to offer employment for originality of mind
rather in tracking old principles into details than in ascending to new
ones,(1022) is merely a temporary one, destined to pass away when some
happy guess shall reveal the highest laws which now baffle inquiry; yet it
is not probable that such an advance will traverse the province of
religion. The survey of those regions where discovery seems most hopeful,
will explain the reason of this assumption.

If the present examination of some of the subtler forms of matter or of
force,(1023) and of their existence in other globes of the solar system
than our own, should hereafter lead to a generalization which shall extend
natural philosophy as widely beyond its present limits as the discovery
made by Newton beyond those of his predecessors, yet these discoveries can
have no bearing, favourable or unfavourable to religion, distinct in kind
from that of present ones. If even a still mightier stride should be
taken, and physiology be able to lay bare the subtle processes through
which mind acts on body;(1024) yet the difficulty would only be an
enhanced form of that which is already used to discredit the spirituality
and immortality of the soul.

If we pass from the physical to the moral or metaphysical sciences, there
is still less ground for expecting progress. True so far as they go, they
offer no opportunity for enlargement, unless perhaps a more careful
analysis, by means of the fertile principle of mental association,(1025)
should cast light on the sensational source of ideas and the physiological
side of mind; and even this would leave the independent evidence of the
mental data, moral and intellectual, of religion, on the same basis as at
present. Critical science again has attained such perfection, that there
is no possibility of an entirely new range of critical thought springing
up in reference to religion, such as aros