Michael Faraday: Third Edition, with PortraitGladstone, J. H. (John Hall)
Science
Michael Faraday: Third Edition, with Portrait
Gladstone, J. H. (John Hall)
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
But his religion deserves a closer attention. When an errand-boy, we
find him hurrying the delivery of his newspapers on a Sunday morning
so as to get home in time to make himself neat to go with his parents
to chapel: his letters when abroad indicate the same disposition;
yet he did not make any formal profession of his faith till a month
after his marriage, when nearly thirty years of age. Of his spiritual
history up to that period little is known, but there seem to be good
grounds for believing that he did not accept the religion of his
fathers without a conscientious inquiry into its truth. It would be
difficult to conceive of his acting otherwise. But after he joined the
Sandemanian Church, his questionings were probably confined to matters
of practical duty; and to those who knew him best nothing could appear
stronger than his conviction of the reality of the things he believed.
In order to understand the life and character of Faraday, it is
necessary to bear in mind not merely that he was a Christian, but that
he was a Sandemanian. From his earliest years that religious system
stamped its impress deeply on his mind, it surrounded the blacksmith's
son with an atmosphere of unusual purity and refinement, it developed
the unselfishness of his nature, and in his after career it fenced his
life from the worldliness around, as well as from much that is esteemed
as good by other Christian bodies. To this small self-contained sect he
clung with warm attachment; he was precluded from Christian communion
or work outside their circle, but his sympathies at least burst all
narrow bounds. Thus the Abbé Moigno tells us that at Faraday's request
he one day introduced him to Cardinal Wiseman. The interview was very
cordial, and his Eminence did not hesitate frankly and good-naturedly
to ask Faraday if, in his deepest conviction, he believed all the
Church of Christ, holy, catholic, and apostolical, was shut up in
the little sect in which he bore rule. "Oh no!" was the reply; "but
I do believe from the bottom of my soul that Christ is with us."
There were other points, too, in his character which reflected the
colouring of the religious school to which he belonged. Thus, while
humility is inseparable from a Christian life, there is a special
phase of that virtue bred of those doctrines which teach that all our
righteousness must be the unmerited gift of another: these doctrines
are strongly insisted upon in the Sandemanian Church, and this humility
was acquired in an intense degree by its minister. Again, while all
Christians deplore the terrible amount of folly and sin in the world,
most recognize also a large amount of good, and believe in progressive
improvement; but small communities are apt to take gloomy views, and
so did Faraday, notwithstanding his personal happiness, and his firm
conviction that "there is One above who worketh in all things, and who
governs even in the midst of that misrule to which the tendencies and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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