And how has all this system resulted? In the older nations, by natural reaction, these colleges, under strict ecclesiastical control, have sent forth the most bitter enemies the Christian Church has ever known--of whom Voltaire and Renan and Saint-Beuve are types; and there are many signs that the same causes are producing the same result in our own country. I might allude to another battle-field in our own land and time. I might show how an attempt to meet the great want, in the State of New York, of an institution providing scientific instruction, has been met with loud outcries from many excellent men, who fear injury thereby to religion. I might picture to you the strategy which has been used to keep earnest young men from an institution which, it is declared, cannot be Christian because it is not sectarian. I might lay before you wonderful lines of argument which have been made to show the dangerous tendencies of a plan which gives to scientific studies the same weight as to classical studies, and which lays no less stress on modern history and literature than on ancient history and literature. I might show how it has been denounced by the friends and agents of denominational colleges and in many sectarian journals; how the most preposterous charges have been made and believed by good men; how the epithets of "godless," "infidel," "irreligious," "unreligious," "atheistic," have been hurled against a body of Christian trustees, professors, and students, and with little practical result save arousing a suspicion in the minds of large bodies of thoughtful young men, that the churches dread scientific studies untrammeled by sectarianism. SUMMARY. You have now gone over the greater struggles in the long war between Ecclesiasticism and Science, and have glanced at the lesser fields. You have seen the conflicts in Physical Geography, as to the form of the earth; in Astronomy, as to the place of the earth in the universe, and the evolution of stellar systems in accordance with law; in Chemistry and Physics; in Anatomy and Medicine; in Geology; in Meteorology; in Cartography; in the Industrial and Agricultural Sciences; in Political Economy and Social Science; and in Scientific Instruction; and each of these, when fully presented, has shown the following results: _First._ In every case, whether the war has been long or short, forcible or feeble, Science has at last gained the victory. _Secondly._ In every case, interference with Science, in the supposed interest of religion, has brought dire evils on both. _Thirdly._ In every case, while this interference, during its continuance, has tended to divorce religion from the most vigorous thinking of the world, and to make it odious to multitudes of the most earnest thinkers; the triumph of Science has led its former conscientious enemies to make new interpretations and lasting adjustments, which have proved a blessing to religion, ennobling its conceptions and bettering its methods.