Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1880 — The Eyes of Knowledge. [ARTICLE]

The Eyes of Knowledge.

Thoee who know little, see little. To *he man who cannot read, this paper is a blank. In exact proportion as onr stock of information increases, the sphere of our mental vision is enlarged. Knowledge furnishes eyes to our understanding, and endows them with clearness, precision, and magnetic power. To the ignorant man, the stars are mere specks of light, rather more ornamental, he thinks, perhaps, than his tin lantern, but not half so useful as a guide to his footsteps through the night To the astronomer, they are worlds and congeries bf worlds, moving through space in obedience to immutable laws, fulfilling in their shining marelfo purposes at which even his educated intellect can only guess, and, seeing them with the eyes of science, he wonders and adores. Botany, chemistry, every branch of natural philosophy, gives us a deeper, truer insight into the mysteries cy which we are surrounded. We cannot even undei stand our own mechanam without the aid of physical science, t has Deen said that the more men snow, the more profound and general their knowledge, the more they are disposed to scepticism in religions matters. The assertion is false. Men of the deepest research are generally the. .firmest believers in revelation. There are' and have been uudevont philosophers, bat the exceptions do not militate against the rule. The greatest lights of modem learning and science have been sincere Christians. See how research confirms Scripture history. Layard, the great archseologist, has found recorded upon disinterred monuments of aacient Egypt the very facts ita relation to the wars of Jndea chronicled in the Bible. On the crumbling fragment of the walls of Nihevah he discovered the name of the prophet Jonah, and he has rendered into English, from the characters on the tombs and monuments of Oriental memoranda of their victories and defeats and progresses, which tally precisely with the statement of Holy Writ. But for the wopderful eyes supplied by scientific research, these physical confirmations of the truth ox divine history would never have been disclosed.