Holiness is Wholeness: According to Joseph Le Conte, Once Highly Respected Scientist

I am willing to bet that Joseph Le Conte is a not a household name in Christian circles. Yet I discovered him through a rather household name in Baptist circles, Charles H. Spurgeon. I want to quote Le Conte more extensively than Spurgeon did, partly because his material is so little known, but more importantly because he has a great way of saying things. He has this to say about holiness:

MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS: I approach, not only with reluctance, but even with fear, the subject of my evening's lecture, the Divine Holiness. There is no attribute of the Divine nature which should so affect us with deep humility - none before which our pride and self-sufficiency should so fall prostate with face in the dust - none with which seems to show between Him and us so impassable a gulf, as this of holiness. These is none, therefore, which seems to us so awful, but which is at the same time so glorious as this. There is none which is so frequently mentioned in the Scriptures, and in such sublime and glowing language, and which is so closely connected there with the Divine glory. In the grand language of Moses: "Who is like unto thee, O Lord? glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders." Isaiah, in still more sublime and glowing language, represents the seraphim in his presence as covering their faces and crying one to another: "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory."

Shall I call this an attribute, then? Is it not rather the glorious combination of all his attributes into one perfect whole? As all his attributes proceed form the absolute, so all again converge and meet in holiness. As from the insufferable white light of the Absolute they all seem to diverge and separate into prismatic hues, so they all seem again to coverge and meet and combine into the dazzling white radiance of his holiness. This, therefore, is rather the intense whiteness, purity, clearness, the infinite lustre and splendor of his perfect nature - like a gem without flaw, without stain, and without color. All of his attributes are glorious, but in this we have a combination of all into a still more glorious whole. It is for this reason that it is so frequently in Scripture associated with the Divine beauty. The poetic nature of the Psalmist is exalted to estasy in contemplation of the "beauty of holiness," the "beauty of the Lord." Beauty is a combination of the elements according to the laws of harmony; the more beautiful the parts or elements, and the more perfect the harmonious combination, the higher the beauty. How high and glorious, therefore, must be the beauty of his attribute which is the perfect combination of all his infinite perfections!

You see, then, why this attribute is so awful to us. In the ideal man all the faculties and powers, mental, moral, and bodily, work together in perfect harmony, making sweet music - the image of God is clear and pure in the human heart. But alas! how far are we from this ideal! In the actual man the purity is stained, the beauty is defaced, the harmony is changed into jarring discord, "like sweet bells jangled out of tune." How it came so, we are not now inquiring. We all feel that it is so. Therefore is this attribute awful to us. It is the awfulness of absolute purity in the presence of impurity; it is the awfulness of perfect beauty in the presence of deformity; it is the awfulness of honor in the presence of dishonor and shame; in one word, it is the awfulness of holiness in the presence of sinfulness. How, then, shall we approach Him before whom angels bow and archangels veil their faces - Him in whose sight the white radiance of heaven itself is stained with impurity?

Is this glorious attribute also revealed in the physical, material nature? Yes, even this is revealed there; but only as such an attribute can be revealed there - viz., by physical symbols. There is a deep correspondence between things spiritual and things physical, a correspondence necessarily flowing from the fact that the physical prceeds from, and there must be a revelation of, the Divine spiritual. Now, we have already seen that holiness is the harmonious combination of all the Divine attributes into one perfect, beautiful whole. Evidently, therefore, the symbol, or correspondence, or revelation, of this must be found in the beauty and harmony of the physical universe, a beauty and a harmony determined by perfect law.

Still later Le Conte says this:

Holiness is like a forgotten strain of music, still lurking unknown and unrecognized in the memory: strike one chord, and the whole may be dimly brought back to the mind. This chord is struck by the Scriptures. The true nature of holiness, once understood by the intellect, and what a glory and a lustre it sheds upon the whole moral and physical world! what a glory is there then in the nature of Deity! what a nobleness and dignity in the true nature of man! What a splendor even in the physical universe, a the symbol and revelation of Deity! Holiness once appropriated and possessed as an attribute of our nature, and what words can adquately express the glory of the change? It is a new heart, a new life, a new spirit, a new birth.

If, then holiness is the beauty of and perfection of the Divine nature, surely it is also the beauty and perfection of the human nature. Now, we have seen that the whole work of man on this earth is to restore or perfect the Divine image in the nature of man, in the reason of man as truth, in the heart of man as love. Now, it is the harmonious combination of all these divine features that constitutes the beauty of the Divine image or holiness in man. Holiness, therefore, is the true end of human life and every other is false.

My friends, I have tried to show you the exceeding beauty of holiness. Shall I now turn [to] the other side of the picture? Shall I show you in contrast the exceeding ugliness of its opposite, sinfulness? If holiness is perfect law and order, then is sinfulness lawlessness and anarchy; if holiness is perfect harmony, then sinfulness is perfect discord; if holiness is spiritual beauty, the sinfulness is spiritual deformity; if the one is purity, and lustre and life, and health, then is the other foulness, and blackness, and spiritual death, and corruption.

Joseph Le Conte, Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1877), p. 158-160, 164-165.

Let me add some straightforward biography as to who this man was for those interested in understanding things more deeply. From Wikipedia, I believe, we read:

Joseph Le Conte (February 26, 1823 - July 6, 1901) was an American geologist.
Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Liberty County, Georgia to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted Le Conte family. He was educated at Franklin College in Athens, Georgia (now the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia), where he graduated in 1841; he afterwards studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. After practising for three or four years at Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard University, and studied natural history under Louis Agassiz.

An excursion made with Professors J. Hall and Agassiz to the Helderberg mountains of New York developed a keen interest in geology. After graduating at Harvard, Le Conte in 1851 accompanied Agassiz on an expedition to study the Florida reefs. On his return he became professor of natural science in Oglethorpe University which was located in Midway, Georgia at the time; and from December of 1852 until 1856 professor of natural history and geology at Franklin College. From 1857 to 1869 he was a professor of chemistry and geology at South Carolina College, which is now the University of South Carolina.

On January 14, 1846, he married Caroline Nisbet, a niece of Eugenius A. Nisbet. The LeContes had four children grow to adulthood: Emma Florence Le Conte, Sarah Elizabeth Le Conte, Caroline Eaton Le Conte, and Joseph Nisbet Le Conte.

During the Civil War Le Conte continued to teach in South Carolina. He also produced medicine and supervised the niter works (to manufacture explosives) for the Confederacy. However, after the war he continued to teach, but he claimed to find Reconstruction politics intolerable, with moves of the Reconstruction-era Legislature to deeply cut funding to South Carolina College.

In 1869, he moved to Berkeley, California to help organize the University of California, along with his brother John Le Conte. He was appointed the first professor of geology and natural history at the University, a post which he held until his death.

He published a series of papers on monocular and binocular vision, and also on psychology. His chief contributions, however, related to geology. He described the fissure-eruptions in western America, discoursed on earth-crust movements and their causes and on the great features of the earths surface. As separate works he published Elements of Geology (1878, 5th ed. 1889); Religion and Science (1874); and Evolution: its History, its Evidences, and its Relation to Religious Thought (1888). In 1874, he was nominated to the National Academy of Sciences. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892, and of the Geological Society of America in 1896.

Le Conte is also noted for his exploration and preservation of the Sierra Nevada of California, USA. He first visited Yosemite Valley in 1870, where he became friends with John Muir and started exploring the Sierra. He became concerned that resource exploitation (such as sheepherding) would ruin the Sierra, so co-founded the Sierra Club with Muir and others in 1892. He was a director of the Sierra Club from 1892 through 1898. His son, Joseph N. Le Conte, was also a noted professor and Sierra Club member.

He died of a heart attack in the Yosemite Valley, California, on the July 6, 1901, right before the Sierra Club's first High Trip. The Sierra Club built the LeConte Memorial Lodge in his honor in 1904. The Le Conte Canyon, Le Conte Divide, Le Conte Falls and Mount Le Conte were named after him. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

Obviously from this short biography, he was a man of some renown in his own day. We may disagree today with some of his views on science and nature. Yet I have a rich science and nature background and love his connections to the field of science and nature. What is so valuable in what he has to say is his connection of holiness to things natural in the way he expresses himself. He has a profound ability to use natural analogies as he speaks, which adds clarity to his thought for those aquainted with nature. I can relate in many ways to what he has to say about holiness. May you also be richly blessed by his writing.

In Christ,

Pastor Jon