The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

92 SCIENCE AND RELIGION.particles related to each other, which can bepressed in upoil each other, or brought intonearer proximity. There is, however, a clearlimit to cornpressibility, as there is to divisibilityof matter. Even if this be granted,however, we are still without a scientific accountof the ultimate structure of matter.This is still a perplexity to be handed on tofuture workers. There may, indeed, seem tobe promise of aid in the analysis of differentforms of matter, as in the reduction of waterto its constituent gases by the action of a galvanicbattery; but such processes, howeverrich in suggestiveness, are insufficient to advancethe main inquiry. It is oftentimes inthis very class of experiments, that science atonce manifests its power, and discovers thelimits which encircle and restrain its efforts.It can decompose, what it can not recompose,thus leaving difficulties as perplexing as before.And besides, even when by analysisthe ultimate parts or chemical constituents,of compound substances have been discovered,science is unable to demonstrate that the constituentelements are ultimately composed ofdistinct atoms, as for example that oxygenand hydrogen are so constituted. We are