The
Candle's Tale

Around the world, many Christian churches mark the passage of advent by lighting successive candles on a wreath. Each week a new flame calls the faithful to reflect on a different part of the great story of anticipation for Christ’s birth.

What these worshippers may not know is that they are also re-enacting one of the most famous scientific lectures ever given.

With these words, the Victorian physicist Michael Faraday invited his audience to peer through the flickering flame of a candle and into the vast, intricate workings of the natural world.

Faraday is best known today for his pioneering work in magnetism, chemistry and electricity. He was also a practising nonconformist Christian. Despite his lack of formal education, Faraday rose to prominence through his relentless curiosity and experimental brilliance. He delivered ‘The Chemical History of a Candle’ in 1860 as part of the Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures, an event designed to bring science to the public, especially children.

Faraday, in fact, had been instrumental in establishing these lectures, believing that it was important for ordinary people to encounter science. His choice of a candle as the topic for his own lectures was an inspired example to show that even the most common objects can hold profound scientific lessons if we observe them closely enough.

In his lectures, Faraday explored the combustion process: how the carbon-based wax melts, vaporises, and reacts with oxygen to produce water vapour and carbon dioxide as well as heat and light. Using the candle, Faraday explained universal laws of science, such as the conservation of matter. (The law states that chemical reactions do not create or destroy stuff, only transform it).

But the candle – and science itself – held more than just technical information for Faraday and his audience. It was also a source of spiritual illumination.

One of Faraday’s subjects was the advent theme of waiting. Some substances, he pointed out, will spontaneously catch flame – that is, react with the oxygen in the air. Others, like the candle, wait to have their energy released by being lit. He invited the audience to share in his wonder and curiosity at this difference.

As the lectures progressed, Faraday’s listeners were encouraged to think about how the candle stood for many truths about human life. He explained how the food we eat is, like the candle’s wax, made of carbon, and is similarly ‘combusted’ inside the body in the process that we call respiration. 

We, like a candle, produce water and carbon dioxide as the waste products of this burning. In an ecological twist, Faraday noted how this fact wires us into a created system of interdependence. Plants use carbon dioxide and release oxygen, while animals (including humans) do the reverse, in an example of creation’s complementarity.

The human metaphor went still deeper. In pondering the mystery of spontaneous and assisted illumination, Faraday was perhaps reflecting on different experiences of faith, which catches fire quickly for some but not others. In the advent context, the candle awaiting its light echoed the ages that had passed before Christ’s revelation came as a taper into the world.

Faraday was, moreover, moved by the realisation that we – like candles – stay alight only for a short while. In his closing words, he bid his audience to burn with a beauty that reflected well on the beauty of the taper that had lit them – meaning, their creator and redeemer.

In Faraday’s lectures, the candle was a simple yet profound illustration for understanding the hidden laws of the universe – including those that govern human beings. When we light a flame, whether in a laboratory or a church, we participate in a long tradition of seeking illumination through understanding and transformation.

Discussion Questions

• Faraday believed that studying the natural world enhances our appreciation of God. Do you agree? What examples would you give?
• Faraday was both a leading scientist and a practising Christian. Can you imagine a similar figure in the present day, perhaps on television? What topic would you like to see them discuss?
• You might like to light a candle and read the story again. What personal reflections are provoked as you stare into the flame?

Further reading

• Faraday’s lecture: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14474
• This year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: https://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures