When one speaks the name Michael Faraday, we need to link it to the title of perhaps the greatest experimental physicist who ever lived. His contributions to the world of science are now legendary. He invented the transformer, the electric motor, and the electric generator. According to Mulfinger: “He also made many important contributions to our knowledge of diamagnetism, polarized light, and the liquefaction of gases. His discovery of benzene laid the foundation for aromatic organic chemistry. And, perhaps most noteworthy of all, he initiated one of the most profound developments in the history of physics – field theory.”1
What is even more remarkable this scientific genius had only a basic grammar school education. He had a passion for science and was self-taught reading books on chemistry and physics whenever he found the time as an apprentice bookbinder. But through a series of fortuitous meetings, meeting just the right people, he found himself at age twenty-one working for the world-renowned chemist Sir Humphry Davy as a laboratory assistant. According to Mulfinger: “Davy himself was a brilliant researcher who discovered six of the chemical elements – sodium, potassium, calcium, barium, strontium, and magnesium. But in later years he often said, ‘The greatest of my discoveries is Faraday.’”2 As the years went by Faraday’s fame grew and his contributions to the field of science earned him numerous awards. But just what motivated this man to explore God’s wonderful creation?
No doubt it was his faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. As much as he loved scientific exploration his passion for Christ was even greater. He never tried to make money off his experiments, he was never paid much of a salary, he was faithful to his wife for almost 50 years until she passed away, lived very frugally, loved to share his knowledge with others, and loved his Lord to the end. Mulfinger gives us a sampling of his humility by sharing the following: “He never got over the wonder that God had allowed him – Michael Faraday, the uneducated son of a blacksmith – to glimpse the beauties of His creation. Even when he was an elderly scientist and his name was a household word and he had the worldwide respect of the scientific community; he did not think too highly of himself. When he was offered a knighthood, he turned it down. He felt that he should be just plain Michael Faraday to the end.”3 Michael Faraday realized that all of his gifts and discoveries were from the Lord and he never stopped giving God the glory for how He used him.
Faraday loved his church and attended it religiously from his childhood up until his death. He rarely missed attending Sunday worship service and the Wednesday prayer meeting, and when he did, he felt he had disappointed God. Again, Mulfinger gives us insights into his great reverence for the Holy Scriptures: “He was a diligent student of the Scriptures. His Bible contained nearly three thousand meticulously written notations in the margins – exegetical aids, comments, and cross-references. It is evident that the knowledge and wisdom gained from his study of the Bible found their outworking in his life. His actions in life were guided completely by God’s will revealed to him as he read the Bible. He did not base his morals on any intuitive sense of right or wrong. The Bible was his only standard.”4
In my book The Challenge, I share that: “At the age of fifty he became an elder in the Chapel Meeting House in Pauls Alley, London. He preached there every Sunday. Near his death he was quoted as saying: ‘My worldly faculties are slipping away day by day. Happy it is for all of us that the true good does not lie in them. As they ebb, may they leave us as little children trusting in the Father of Mercies and accepting His unspeakable gift. I bow before Him who is Lord of all.’”5
Even at his death in 1867 his humility never changed. While he could have been buried at Westminster Abbey he insisted on a plain and private funeral. Today Michael Faraday stands out as a truly humble man of science and a humble man of God.
1 George Mulfinger & Julia Mulfinger Orozco, Christian Men of Science. (Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2001), p. 87.
2 Ibid., p. 75.
3 Ibid., p. 84.
4 Ibid., p. 81.
5 Curt Blattman, The Challenge. (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007), p. 71.