There were lessons, too, in chemistry: and in the explosions of gases, the evolving of composite stenches and the pyrotechnics of phosphorescent combustion the younger hands found a joy that knew no satiety or abatement. But Tom confined his teaching to the veriest elements of inorganic chemistry, those whose interest in the subject clamoured for more must seek their further advancement in the fascinating subject elsewhere. It was to teach, to drive home, the great truth of fixed, unchanging, ruthless law that had been, from the first, the dominating idea. And when his pupils had once grasped thoroughly the idea of the all-pervading law in the material world, what was easier than to lead them, without their realising his drift and purpose, to the conception of the fixed, the immutable in the moral law, and what more easy to expel from minds so prepared the baneful influence of the extra-natural creeds that led so many to repose their confidence in the adventitious, the possible interposition of a _Deus ex machina_ to rescue them from the disasters they had courted for themselves. That twice two make four, neither more nor less, is a great fact; that H and Cl make hydrochloric acid and not Devonshire cream is also a fact; that happiness ensues upon well-doing and suffering upon sin, this also is a fact; but one the churches attenuate to men's minds by insisting upon a rote punishment that may be averted by timely repentance. Tom taught that punishment, mediate or immediate, direct or indirect, is here, and in this present time. Now Tom was not such a fool as to dub his discourses Lectures on Religion. He knew well enough that to do so would be to talk to empty benches. The orthodox are suspicious of religious instruction unless they receive it wearing a Sunday dress, and a Sunday face, and in a conventional conventicle established by the State, or by that force which is more powerful than the State, the approval of Madam Grundy. The unorthodox, for quite different reasons, would have shunned his class-room, though it was the weaving shed at Co-op Mill they would have suspected a snare to trap them into saintliness. So the astute Tom called his theses "Lectures on the Science of Living," and succeeded insidiously in making his hearers perceive that the Science of Living and Religion are one and the same thing; by Religion, of course, not being understood that _olla podrida_, or hotch-potch of legend, fable, history, surmise poetry, rhapsody, and morals which so many confound with religion. The expositions of this quite unheard of Science of Living were delivered on the Sunday afternoons and in the weaving shed at the mill. Another novelty was that there was no collection. And the lectures began to be talked about and be popular. "What are ta' fidgettin' abaat, Luke?" a constant caller at the _Croppers' Arms_ would ask as the minute-hand of the clock plodded towards the third hour of the Sunday afternoon.