And if it has been thus, in the case of God and of humanity, has it
not been equally so in the case of the physical world? Where are
now all those unnatural superstitions--the monkish contempt for
marriage and social life, the ghosts and devils; the astrology, the
magic, and other dreams of which I will not speak here, which made
this world, in the eyes of our forefathers, a doleful and dreadful
puzzle; and which made man the sport of arbitrary powers, of cruel
beings, who could torment and destroy us, but over whom we could
have no righteous power in return? Where are all those dark dreams
gone which maddened our forefathers into witch-hunting panics, and
which on the Continent created a priestly science of witch-finding
and witch-destroying, the literature whereof (and it is a large one)
presents perhaps the most hideous instance known of human cruelty,
cowardice, and cunning? Where, I ask, are those dreams now? So
utterly vanished, that very few people in this church know what a
great part they played in the thoughts of our forefathers; how
ghosts, devils, witches, magic, and astrology, filled the minds, not
only of the ignorant, but of the most learned, for centuries.

And now, behold, nature being made manifest, is light. Science has
taught men to admire where they used to dread; to rule where they
used to obey; to employ for harmless uses what they were once afraid
to touch; and, where they once saw only fiends, to see the orderly
and beneficent laws of the all-good and almighty God. Everywhere,
as the work of nature is unfolded to our eyes, we see beauty, order,
mutual use, the offspring of perfect Love as well as perfect Wisdom.
Everywhere we are finding means to employ the secret forces of
nature for our own benefit, or to ward off physical evils which
seemed to our forefathers as inevitable, supernatural; and even the
pestilence, instead of being, as was once fancied, the capricious