the same time they are closely connected. They agree in that they are alike occupied with religion as an empirical fact. Hence they may be regarded as parts of a comprehensive science, to which it might be well to confine the designation "Science of Religions," instead of using it in the vague and ambiguous way which is so common. Thus understood, the Science of Religions may be said to deal with religion as a phenomenon of experience, whether outwardly manifested in history or inwardly realized in consciousness; to seek to describe and explain religious experience so far as it can be described and explained without transcending the religious experience itself. Its students have only to ascertain, analyse, explain and exhibit experienced fact. Were religion a physical fact, to study it merely as a fact would be enough. The astronomer, the naturalist, the chemist have no need to judge their facts; they have only to describe them, analyze them, and determine their relations. But it is otherwise with the students of religion, of morality, of art, of reasoning. They soon come to a point where they must become judges of the phenomena and pronounce on their truth and worth. Experience in the physical sphere is experience and nothing more; experience in the spiritual sphere is very often experience of what is irreverent and impious, immoral and vicious, ugly and erroneous, foolish or insane. Has the mind simply to describe and analyze, accept and be content with such experience? Even the logician and the æsthetician will answer in the negative, will claim to judge their facts as conforming to or contravening the laws of truth and the ideals of art. Still more decidedly must the moralist and the student of religion so answer. Religion, then, is not completely studied when it is only studied historically. Hence it must be dealt with by other sciences or disciplines than those which are merely historical. All the particular theological sciences or disciplines treat of particular aspects of religion or of religion in particular ways. Their relationships to one another can only be determined by their relationship to it. They can only be unified and co-ordinated in a truly organic manner by their due reference to it. When religion is studied not merely in particular aspects and ways, but in its unity and entirety, with a view to its comprehension in its essence and all essential relations, it is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. Although a distinct and essential department of philosophy, and the highest and most comprehensive theological science, the philosophy of religion could only have appeared in an independent and appropriate form when both philosophy and theology were highly developed. THE TESTIMONY OF LITERATURE. To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant and which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship and the salutary influence of example.-Johnson. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. -Burke. A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth of philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. -Bacon. JOTTINGS IN SCIENCE. Go abroad Upon the paths of nature, and when all -N. P. WILLIS. ANSWERS TO MANY QUERIES. Newton was born in 1642. The word philosophy means "I love wisdom." Astrology rightly means the science of the stars. Galileo constructed the first refracting telescope. The term science comes from the Latin scio, I know. At the equator the limit of perpetual snow is 14,400 feet. Perigee is that point in the moon's orbit nearest the earth. Torricelli, a pupil of Galileo, invented the barometer in 1643. The principle of the pendulum was discovered by Galileo in 1583. Among all rude nations the healing art is practiced by the priests. The Leyden Jar was invented by Muschenbrock, of Leyden, in 1746. Perihelion is that point of a planet's orbit in which it is nearest the sun. The first balloon ascent was made in 1783 by Joseph and Stephen Montgolfier. Froebel reminds us that nature supplies the raw material, education is the manufacturer. As physics means the science of matter, it is about synonymous with natural philosophy. Aphelion is that point in the elliptical orbit of a planet which is most remote from the sun. The inductive school of philosophy, on which modern science has been developed, began about 1624. The horse-power of Niagara is three and one quarter million nominal, equal to ten million horses effective. Three miles an hour is about the average speed of the gulf stream; at certain places, however, this speed is considerably increased. Cuvier says: "In the exact sciences at least, it is the patience of a sound intellect, when invincible, which truly constitutes genius." Satellites are small members of the solar system, taking the place of attendants of the larger planets, by which their motions are controlled. On shipboard the term Binnacle is given to a wooden box or case containing the compass, together with a lamp and other necessary apparatus. The crow flies at the rate of but twenty-five miles per hour. The sparrow hawk flies six times as far, or 150 miles, in the same length of time. Rider Haggard makes a scientific error when in "King Solomon's Mines" he describes a lunar eclipse taking place at the new moon instead of at the full. The Arctic whale never migrates to the southward as most species of whales do, because of its inability to live in the heated waters of the southern seas. The carbon of the food, mixed with the oxygen of the air, furnishes fuel for the body, which evolves the heat in exactly the same way that a fire or candle does. The smallest tree in Great Britain grows on the summit of Ben Lomond. It is the dwarf willow, which is mature when it attains the height of two inches. Lightning is zig-zag because, as it condenses the air in the immediate advance of its path it flies from side to side in order to pass where there is the least resistance to its progress. Generally speaking, we say that the curvature of the earth amounts to about seven inches to the statute mile; it is exactly 6.99 inches, or 7.962 inches for a geographical mile. The sciences that have been educed from reason are called abstract, those that depend on cause and effect are natural, and those assumed to be complete are exact sciences. Good clear ice, two inches thick, will bear men to walk on; four inches thick will bear horses and riders; six inches thick will bear horses and teams with moderate loads. The normal temperature of man is about 98.5 degrees; of the snail, 76 degrees; oyster, 82 degrees; porpoise, 100 degrees; sheep, 104 degrees; hog, 105 degrees; chicken, 11 degrees. To discover the weight of our earth, Cavendish makes it 5,480 times the weight of water, and the total weight to be 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons (i. e. 6,000,000 trillions). The properties and use of the mariner's compass were known to the Chinese centuries ago. It was brought to Europe in the thirteenth century, and first used on the Mediterranean. That fragile and paradoxical wonder, the "snow plant," which is found in the Sierra Nevada mountains, is pronounced by western botanists as probably our most remarkable plant. One horse-power will raise 161⁄2 tons per minute a height of twelve inches, working eight hours a day. This is about nine thousand nine hundred foot-tons daily, or twelve times a man's work. A gray, green, or yellowish green sunset indicates rain. A red sunset means rain. A deep blue sky means fair weather. A growing whiteness, a storm. Unusually bright or twinkling stars mean rain. Plants breathe through the "stomata," or breathing-pores in the leaves. In case the plant or tree is of the leafless variety the stem, which is also provided with stomata, performs the office of breathing. In the manufacture of air gas, steam is passed over petroleum or other rich mineral oil, which it volatilizes, and the resulting mixture burns brilliantly. The process is, however, expensive, and not much used. When we speak of chemical affinity we mean the tendency to combine with one another which is exhibited by many substances; or to the force by which the substances constituting a compound are held together. The elephant is given the credit of being the most long-lived, as well as the most intelligent of all animals. Cuvier says that there are instances of their having lived to beyond the age of three hundred years. Professor Barnard's photograph of the milky way shows the existence of 500,000,000 suns, each supposed to be the center of a system of planets, where hitherto it was thought to contain only about 20,000,000 such suns. A female codfish will lay 45,000,000 eggs during a single season. Piscatorial authorities say that were it not for the work of the natural enemies of fish, they would fill all the available space in the seas, rivers and oceans. Snow appears white because it is an aggregation of an infinite number of minute crystals, each reflecting all the colors of the rainbow; these colors, uniting before they reach the eye, cause it to appear white to every normal eye. Army worm is a name sometimes given to the grubs of a small black fly, very common in some European forests. In the United States the name is given to a voracious moth, common everywhere, which collects in large numbers. One pair of rabbits can become multiplied in four years into one million two hundred and fifty thousand. They were introduced in Australia a few years ago, and now that colony ships six million rabbit skins yearly to England. The nautical term "trade winds" applies to constant winds which blow at sea to the distance of about 30° on both sides of the equator. On the north of the equator they blow from the north-east, and on the south from the south-east. Lead in the form of filings, under a pressure of two thousand atmospheres, or thirteen tons to the square inch, becomes compressed into a solid block, in which it is impossible to detect the slightest vestige of the original grain. Under a pressure of five thousand atmospheres it liquefies. Below half a mile in depth the water of the ocean is intensely cold, remaining both winter and summer at a point only slightly above freezing. The contents of a trawl hauled up from the floor of the sea at the equator, will be found to include mud and ooze that is nearly freezing. Simoom (Arab. samúm, fr. samma, he poisoned) is the designation of a hot, dry wind, laden with dust and sand, which prevails in Africa and Arabia, especially at the time of the equinoxes. It originates in the sand deserts of the interior. Called Sirocco in South Italy, and Solano in Spain. Richard Proctor, the astronomer, said that when a novelist attempts to describe a scientific phenomenon, he should take care to be exact, for people pay more attention to the descriptions of the novel than to those of the scientific text-book. We have sixty divisions on the dials of our clocks and watches, because the old Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, who lived in the second century before Christ, used the Babylonian system of dividing time, and that system being sexagesimal. Tin, when compressed in powder, becomes solid under a pressure of ten tons on the square inch, zinc at thirty-eight tons, antimony at thirtyeight tons, aluminum at thirty-eight tons, bismuth at thirty-eight tons, and copper at thirty-three tons. The volume of a portion of gas varies inversely as the pressure. Thus if we double the pressure, the gas will be reduced one-half; if we treble the pressure, the volume of gas will be reduced to one-third, and so on. This is the fact which physicists term Boyle's Law. It is believed that whales often attain the age of four hundred years. The number of years these huge creatures have lived is ascertained by counting the layers of laminæ forming the horny substance known as "whalebone." These laminæ increase yearly, just as the "growths" do on a tree. Scientists say that if the bed of the Pacific ocean could be seen it would disclose to view several mountains with truncated tops scattered over it. These mountains would be perfectly bare at their bases, and all around their tops they would be covered with a beautiful growth of coral polypi. A camel has twice the carrying power of an ox; with an ordinary load of four hundred pounds he can travel twelve to fourteen days without water, going forty miles a day. Camels are fit to work at five years old, but their strength begins to decline at twenty-five, although they live usually till forty. Should the earth collide with another world of equal bulk, it is claimed the heat generated would be sufficient to melt, boil and completely evaporize a mass of ice seven hundred times the bulk of both the colliding worlds-in other words, an ice planet one hundred and fifty thousand miles in diameter. Scientists use the term Choke-damp (also called after-damp or foul damp), to describe the carbonic acid gas given off by coal which accumulates in coal mines, and may suffocate those exposed to it. It is distinguished from fire-damp, the marsh gas or light carburetted hydrogen which causes the explosions. Our atmosphere which is a gaseous compound of oxygen and nitrogen surrounding the earth, is estimated to extend for a distance of fortyfive miles from the globe. It exerts a pressure of fifteen pounds to the square inch on the surface of human and other bodies, but as the pressure is balanced inside and out no inconvenience is felt. Heredity is the term applied to the transmission to the offspring of the characteristics, mental and physical, of the parent. Such peculiarities may be imparted by the mother or by the father. The study of heredity has in recent years been much developed by Haeckei, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Darwin, Wallace, Galton, and others |