Ter that ended: `And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun, / Earth with her thousand voices praises God!’John Tyndall’s religionTowards the end of the same lecture he urged his pupils to feel close to God: `Every good thought of your hearts comes from God. You feel him stirring in every noble impulse . . .. This is the only practical way of making the acquaintance of the great spirit, to feel him within, to let him speak through your lips and life.’ This liberating religion of the spirit was vastly richer than the stilted theologies offered by the institutionalized religions that he now insistently criticized. He also contrasted this powerful sense of engagement with the divine with `the feebleness of scientific (��)-BGB-3111MedChemExpress (��)-BGB-3111 deductions’. Religion was a matter of profound spiritual feeling and not an intellectual enquiry. Indeed, he went on to acknowledge that natural theology is of very limited scope: `The wintry light of science shews us up there in heaven an omnipotent mechanic who framed our universe and keeps it in repair; but science can shew us nothing of the moral attributes of this great being.’74 Natural theological arguments drawn from science can do no more than demonstrate the existence of the divine being who created and sustains the Universe. By contrast, he stressed the importance of the moral and spiritual life.EMERSONANDCARLYLEIt is important to remember that Tyndall had been a poet long before he began teaching scientific subjects at Queenwood and that he was immersed in the poetry and the serious literature of the age. In the early 1840s Byron had been his mentor, but by the time Tyndall delivered his valedictory lecture he was captivated by the metaphysical ideas of Thomas Carlyle and of the American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Several months earlier–in January 1848–he had heard Emerson lecture in Halifax and had purchase Sch66336 purchased his works, which he avidly read.75 (An Emersonian connection can be found in the last passage quoted above; the phrase `wintry light’ appears in a similar context in Emerson’s 1836 essay Nature.76) A few weeks after his encounter with Emerson, Tyndall wrote to Hirst, who was increasingly becoming one of his main confidants:In Emerson you behold one of the noblest souls that ever was struck in clay–every time I rise from his book I find a new vigour in my heart–he teaches one to be so independent that you almost feel disposed to quarrel with himself just to shew how little you cared about even him. There are many parts of his writings very difficult, especially some portions of the Transcendentalist, and Idealism–The rule he lays down will I believe make all clear–let us by enacting our best insight by doing that which we feel to be right, strengthen our powers and purify our vision, and all will be understandable– There is a world of meaning in those two words he uses so emphatically I ought.’More generally, Tyndall had embraced many of Emerson’s main themes, including his emphasis on transcendentalism and individualism, discussed above. Tyndall’s letters and journal likewise show his increasing attraction to the writings of Carlyle, who was a close friend of Emerson’s. Writing to Hirst in November 1848, Tyndall admitted `for my own part I owe to him [Carlyle] and Emerson more than to any other men living’.78 Although Tyndall was later to correspond and meet with Carlyle,79 in late June 1844 he read Past and Present (1843). Journal entries show that he closely studied Chartism (1840) in May.Ter that ended: `And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun, / Earth with her thousand voices praises God!’John Tyndall’s religionTowards the end of the same lecture he urged his pupils to feel close to God: `Every good thought of your hearts comes from God. You feel him stirring in every noble impulse . . .. This is the only practical way of making the acquaintance of the great spirit, to feel him within, to let him speak through your lips and life.’ This liberating religion of the spirit was vastly richer than the stilted theologies offered by the institutionalized religions that he now insistently criticized. He also contrasted this powerful sense of engagement with the divine with `the feebleness of scientific deductions’. Religion was a matter of profound spiritual feeling and not an intellectual enquiry. Indeed, he went on to acknowledge that natural theology is of very limited scope: `The wintry light of science shews us up there in heaven an omnipotent mechanic who framed our universe and keeps it in repair; but science can shew us nothing of the moral attributes of this great being.’74 Natural theological arguments drawn from science can do no more than demonstrate the existence of the divine being who created and sustains the Universe. By contrast, he stressed the importance of the moral and spiritual life.EMERSONANDCARLYLEIt is important to remember that Tyndall had been a poet long before he began teaching scientific subjects at Queenwood and that he was immersed in the poetry and the serious literature of the age. In the early 1840s Byron had been his mentor, but by the time Tyndall delivered his valedictory lecture he was captivated by the metaphysical ideas of Thomas Carlyle and of the American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Several months earlier–in January 1848–he had heard Emerson lecture in Halifax and had purchased his works, which he avidly read.75 (An Emersonian connection can be found in the last passage quoted above; the phrase `wintry light’ appears in a similar context in Emerson’s 1836 essay Nature.76) A few weeks after his encounter with Emerson, Tyndall wrote to Hirst, who was increasingly becoming one of his main confidants:In Emerson you behold one of the noblest souls that ever was struck in clay–every time I rise from his book I find a new vigour in my heart–he teaches one to be so independent that you almost feel disposed to quarrel with himself just to shew how little you cared about even him. There are many parts of his writings very difficult, especially some portions of the Transcendentalist, and Idealism–The rule he lays down will I believe make all clear–let us by enacting our best insight by doing that which we feel to be right, strengthen our powers and purify our vision, and all will be understandable– There is a world of meaning in those two words he uses so emphatically I ought.’More generally, Tyndall had embraced many of Emerson’s main themes, including his emphasis on transcendentalism and individualism, discussed above. Tyndall’s letters and journal likewise show his increasing attraction to the writings of Carlyle, who was a close friend of Emerson’s. Writing to Hirst in November 1848, Tyndall admitted `for my own part I owe to him [Carlyle] and Emerson more than to any other men living’.78 Although Tyndall was later to correspond and meet with Carlyle,79 in late June 1844 he read Past and Present (1843). Journal entries show that he closely studied Chartism (1840) in May.
