ranquil are also loyal. When
this is true we can only rejoice in their attainments.

If we look for other examples still of types of spirituality which
seem to imply membership in the invisible church, I myself know of few
better instances of the genuinely religious spirit than those which
are presented to us, in recent times, by the more devoted servants of
the cause of any one of the advancing natural sciences. And such
instances are peculiarly instructive, because many great men of
science, as a result of their personal temperament and training, are
little interested in the forms of the visible church, and very
frequently are loath to admit that their calling has religious
bearings. But when the matter is rightly viewed, one sees that the
great scientific investigator is not only profoundly {288} loyal, but
serves a cause which, at the present time, probably does more to unify
every sort of wholesome human activity, to bind in one all the higher
interests of humanity, to bring men of various lands and races close
together in spirit than does any other one special cause that modern
men serve. The cause of any serious scientific investigator is, from
my point of view, a superhuman cause, for precisely the reasons which
I have already explained to you.

The individual scientific worker, uninterested as he usually is in
metaphysics, and unconcerned as he often is about the relation of his
task to the interests of the visible church, knows indeed that with
all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength he serves a cause that
he conceives to be worthy. He knows, also, that this cause is
beneficent, and that it plays a great part in the directing of human
activities, whether because his science already has practical
applications, or because the knowledge of nature is in itself an
elevating and enlarging influence for mankind. The scientific
investigator knows also that, while his individual experience is the
source to which he personally looks for new observations of facts, his
private observations contribute to science only in so far as other
investigators can verify his results. Hence his whole scientific life
consists in submitting all his most prized discoveries to the rigid
test of an estimate that belongs to no individual human experience,
but that is, or that through loyal efforts tends to become, the common
possession {289} of the organised experience of all the workers in his
field. So far the devoted investigat