Such is, in the presence of nature, the spontaneous movement of the heart and of the reason. But a false wisdom obscures these clear verities by clouds of sophisms. When your heart feels impelled to render glory to God, there is danger lest importunate thoughts rise in your mind and counteract the impulse of your adoration. Perhaps you have heard it said, perhaps you have read, that the accents of spiritual song, those echoes, growing ever weaker, of by-gone ages, are no longer heard by a mind enlightened by modern science. I should wish to deliver you from this painful doubt. I should wish to protect you from the fascinations of a false science. I should wish that in the view of nature, even those who have as yet no wish to adore, with St. Paul, Him whose invisible perfections are clearly seen when we contemplate His works, may at least feel themselves free to admire, with Socrates, "the supreme God who maintains the works of creation in the flower of youth and in a vigor ever new." Let us examine a few of the prejudices which it is sought to disseminate, in order to deprive of their force the reasonings of Newton, and to turn us from the opinions of Kepler. It is said that science leads away from God, and that faith continues to be the lot only of the ignorant. Listen on this head first of all to the Italian Franchi. "The class of society in which infidels and sceptics especially abound is that of savants and men of letters,--men, in short, who have gone through studies, in the course of which they have certainly become acquainted with the famous demonstrations of the existence of God. But no sooner have they examined them with their own eyes, and submitted them to the criterion of their own judgment, than these demonstrations no longer demonstrate anything; these reasonings turn out to be only paralogisms."[100] Here we have the thesis in its general form: to become an infidel or a sceptic, it is enough to be a well educated man. The German Buechner will now show us the application of this notion to the special study of nature. "At this day, our hardest laborers in the sciences, our most indefatigable students of nature, profess materialistic sentiments."[101] The same tendencies are often manifested among French writers. The author of a recent astronomical treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words over the profound faith of Kepler, and takes evident pleasure in throwing into relief the tokens of sympathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace upon atheism.[102] Here then we have open attempts to found a prejudice against religion on the authority of science; and these attempts disturb the minds of not a few. I ask two questions on this head. Is it true, in fact, that modern naturalists are generally irreligious? Is it possible that the science of nature, rightly considered, should lead to atheism?[103]