The Christian Scientist

Is it possible to be a Christian and a scientist at the same time? Some think it is difficult as there are not very many Christian scientists. Many of them believe in false scientific theories such as Evolution because that is what they are taught in school. Here is the story of a truly great scientist who had great faith in God. The more he studied about science, the more he saw that God is the true author of science.

“Young Michael Faraday will never get anywhere in life, his father being only a poor blacksmith.”
“Yes, he’ll never be able to go to University; too bad!”

This was the opinion of many people about a boy who became one of the world’s most brilliant scientists. In the Encyclopedia one writer wrote that, “Faraday was possibly the greatest experimental genius the world has ever known.”
“He smells the truth,” said Professor F.W. Kohlrausch. And Albert Einstein said that Michael Faraday’s contributions to science were greater than anyone’s since Galileo.

Faraday was the first person to make liquid from gas. He discovered many useful principles of the dynamo and electric motor.
He also worked out new laws governing relationships between electricity and magnetism. And he discovered how to separate benzene from fish oil by distillation. This was a very practical achievement because benzene is the basis of many dyes, high explosives, and perfumes.

When Michael was thirteen years old, he worked as an errand boy in a London bookshop. At that point in his life it seemed as though he would not get very far in life. But he was a very diligent worker and soon he became an assistant bookbinder and had opportunities to read many books. He was especially interested in books about science. He would go home after work and often perform experiments, with inexpensive equipment.

As well as reading a lot, young Faraday enjoyed going to listen to scientists and philosophers lecture. He felt especially fortunate to hear many of Sir Humphrey Davy’s lectures. He took very detailed notes and once sent Mr. Davy three hundred eighty-six pages of his notes! Mr. Davy was so impressed that he hired Michael Faraday to work in his laboratory at the Royal Institute for Diffusing of Knowledge. The Royal Institute was at that time one of the best schools of science. Michael’s job was to care for scientific instruments and help the lecturers prepare and deliver their materials.

In 1813, when he was just twenty-two years of age, he was privileged to accompany Sir Humphrey Davy and Lady Davy on an eighteen month tour of Europe. During this time he met and talked with several of the world’s greatest scientists. It was indeed an education within itself. And Faraday always learned all he could from others.

Wherever this man went or worked he always had an all-powerful Partner with him – God. “There is One above who worketh in all things,” Michael Faraday often said. While many scientists denied God, Faraday could see His handiwork in all creation and in every scientific law.

God was also an ever-present guest in his home. In June 1821, he married Sarah Bernard, a devoted Christian. “We are bound up together in one hope, and in faith and love which is in Jesus Christ,” said this Christian man.
He was an elder in the church that he attended regularly. Often he read aloud from the Bible there. He also prayed and preached. “When he quoted Scripture,” said another elder, “his face shone like the face of an angel.”

“Faraday seemed to be filled with energy that shone from his eyes. He had learned in the school of Christ to become as a little child, and he loved not the world, because the love of the Father was in him,” said Dr. Gladstone, one of his friends.
Although the Faradays had no children of their own, they dearly loved young people. For nineteen years consecutively this Christian man of science delivered a series of six lectures for children during the Christmas season. Those speeches, composed of simple, interesting language and material, glorified Jesus and helped many children to love Him more.

During fifty-four years of devoted Christian and scientific service Michael Faraday received more than one hundred honors, including medals and other types of awards. Every important educational institution in the world was eager to honour him. Yet he sought no personal honour. He refused knighthood, declined when offered the presidency of the Royal Society. He was a very humble, religious person, feeling always that God, rather than man, should be glorified. He wanted only to be plain Michael Faraday, servant of God and humanity.

Yet he was quite human, like everyone else. When he was a boy he rode bicycles with the other boys in his village. He played a flute, and hit a wroiig note once i..i a while. But he practiced the golden rule seven days a week. “There were no shabby places or ugly corners in his mind,” said a friend.

Professor Jean Dumas, a great French scientist, spoke of Michael Faraday and said, “Fidelity to his religious faith, and the constant observance of the moral law constitute the ruling characteristics of his life. Doubtless his firm belief in that justice on high which weighs all our merits, in that sovereign goodness which weighs all our sufferings, did not inspire Faraday with his great discoveries, but it gave him the straightforwardness, the self-respect, the self-control and the spirit of justice which enabled him to combat evil fortune with boldness, and to accept prosperity without being puffed up.”

These are fine words spoken about a fine God-fearing man. He believed that God inspired his great discoveries, and he so often said, “There is One above who worketh in all things.”
Although Faraday was earnest and sincere, he did have a sense of humor. Occasionally he changed his voice when calling to someone in another room, then chuckled when that person failed to recognize his voice.

Once when he entered a classroom at the end of Professor Daniell’s lecture and smelled sulphurated hydrogen, he said, “A savory lecture, Professor Daniell!” At another time, when there was some ammonia left in a jar over mercury, Faraday asked Daniell to tell him what it was. And when Daniell put his head down to see more clearly, Faraday blew some of the harmless but smelly gas into his face.

The world will long remember Michael Faraday for his important contribution to science. But Christians have been even more impressed and inspired by a statement he made shortly before he died. At age seventy-six, as Faraday sat calmly in a rocking chair, he was asked, “What are your new thoughts on science now?” He answered, “I have none, but I thank God I am not resting my dying head on guesswork. ‘I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.'”

Many brilliant people have made comments about Michael Faraday over the years, but probably no commentator has expressed the truth about him more clearly than did Dr. Gladstone in his book about the life of Michael Faraday:

“The genuineness of his religious character is acknowledged by all. We have admired his faithfulness, his amiability of disposition, and his love of justice and truth. How-far these qualities were natural gifts, like his clearness of intellect, we cannot precisely tell; but that he exercised constant self-control without becoming hard, ascended the pathway of fame without ever losing his balance, and shed around himself a peculiar halo of love and joyousness, must be attributed in no small degree to a heart at peace with God, and to the consciousness of a higher life.”

Surely it is comforting to know that the same God who directed Michael Faraday is just as real and powerful today with all the latest scientific discoveries being made-some of which have led to disasters such as the atom bomb. We must remember that God is in control. We need a willingness to accept and knov, constantly Michael Faraday’s “One above who worketh in all things,” his best friend, Jesus.

Michael Faraday found God in every point of science that he studied and discovered. We, too, should look for God as we study science, because He is there at the centre of it all.