We must face the light and not bury our heads in the earth.

I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on, will reveal new ways in which God works, and bring to us deeper revelations of the wholly unknown.
"The physical and the spiritual seem to be, at present, separated by an impassable gulf; but at any moment that gulf may be overleaped--possibly a new revelation may come....
"April, 1878.

I called on Professor Henry at the Smithsonian Institute.
He must be in his eightieth year; he has been ill and seems feeble, but he is still the majestic old man, unbent in figure and undimmed in eye.
"I always remember, when I see him, the remark of Dorothy Dix, 'He is the truest man that ever lived.' "We were left alone for a little while, and he introduced the subject of his nearness to death.

He said, 'The National Academy has raised $40,000, the interest of which is for myself and family as long as any of us live [he has daughters only], and in view of my death it is a great comfort to me.' I ventured to ask him if he feared death at all.
He said, 'Not in the least; I have thought of it a great deal, and have come to feel it a friend.

I _cherish_ the belief in immortality; I have suffered much, at times, in regard to that matter.' Scientifically considered, only, he thought the probability was on the side of continued existence, as we must believe that spirit existed independent of matter.
"He went to a desk and pulled out from a drawer an old copy of 'Gregory's Astronomy,' and said, 'That book changed my whole life--I read it when I was sixteen years old; I had read, previously, works of the imagination only, and at sixteen, being ill in bed, that book was near me; I read it, and determined to study science.' I asked him if a life of science was a good life, and he said that he felt that it was so.
"...