Nature may be termed the realization of God's everworking will: "Heaven and earth have hearkened to His voice, and their labour hath been to do His will" (Hooker, "Eccl. Pol.," i. 3). Perfect in provisions for every possible event or combination of events, it requires no new or additional legislation, no acts to repeal, no acts to amend. "Mundus, cum creatus est, habuit quasi semen eorum omnium quæ nunc fiunt" (S. Augustine). Mechanical powers are not the only manifestation of energy. Life, intelligence, emotion, parts of the intramundane working, produce something which is not otherwise effected. We find the vital mental and emotional working upon the sensuous; the sensuous upon the mechanical; and, in some respects, we as clearly discern marks of superhuman intelligence in the far-reaching adaptation and constructive arrangements of nature, as we perceive the operation of our own intelligence in the productions of human art. Physical and moral evil conflict with this beneficent Intelligence. We, ourselves, are consciously capable of good and evil. In and against the evil, we recognize an advance, or remedial process, in connection with a Power working for righteousness "From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, The advance--whether physical or moral, by energies from within nature, or by energies from without—is not so much by the past containing the future, as by the subsequent retaining and exalting that which preceded; and the ascent warrants our intellectual and emotional conviction that, in due time, the universe will represent, as in a glass, free from obliquity, speck and discolouring, the perfected work of One "Whose voice is on the rolling air; We hear Him where the waters run; And in the setting He is fair." Science does not find that investigation renders the world less wonderful, all things mechanical, and men brutal. Gaining a firmer, fuller grasp of truth, she passes on the lamp of knowledge from generation to generation for illumination of the world, as a kingdom built up in gloriam fidei in gloriam Dei. “ τὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς φέγγος λαμπαδευόμενον ἐπ ̓ ἀλλήλοις διαδοχαῖς ἰσόχρονον γενήσεται Κόσμῳ.” PHILO. The strange story of a Progressing Kingdom, which all accept, the secularist believing in man, and the Christian believing in God, testifies to something more than a blind whirlpool or eddy of fate. The advance from slime and ooze is not by innumerable stages of mere mechanical ascent, not by casual improvement of brutes, but by entrance of creative, quickening, mental and moral influences, joint operations of will and might, The kingdom and progress are placed above doubt by their very nature and purity: for how could Folly fabricate a narrative or process of Wisdom? When and how was it possible in a world which had no trace, nor sign, nor thought, nor consciousness of God, to fable of His Existence, of Righteousness, and of Judgment to Come? Surely, those who go about in miscalculating unbelief, teaching a naturalness which is unnatural, are in great ignorance, and much in want of better employment. The vocation of high natures is to live, and to teach, a nobler life than that. Let the time past suffice for folly, and the future be given to truth. Accurate comprehensive thought shows that Nature is due to Eternal Infinitude, both as to space and time. Intelligible laws presuppose the existence of Intelligence, even as all existences are co-ordinated developments of former potencies. Whatever the marks of reason in human works, there is more comprehensive purpose in natural works. Atoms and molecules do not, of themselves, build the crystal, the plant, the animal; a directing, distributive, constructive principle, essentially transcending them, acts in and by them. Hence, Nature in its origin, its material substance; in its energy displayed by mechanical, chemical, vital, intellectual, emotional forces, is due to the Supernatural. Natural advance is hindered. by manifold evils, but as the advance is ever and evermore a gain—a differentiating into more perfect use—we inhabit a kingdom in which all evil will ultimately be Overcome. In the divine studies of it, there is something that brings peace and light to the mind, something which preserves and embalms even the beauty of the body. "The Grecians most divinely have given to the active perfection of men a name expressing both beauty and goodness, кaλoyalía" (Hooker, “Eccl. Pol.,” i. 8). Everything murmurs a truth-"Thou art no longer only a part of that which withers and decays. Thou art no machine of clay-moved by a spring, to be trodden into the mire which thou didst tread. Thou belongest to a vast universal process: not only to the matter—rather to the essence and spirit of things hast thou kindred and alliance." THOUGHT III. INNER IMPULSE TO THE MIRACULOUS. ". . . from higher to higher : As mounts the heavenward altar-fire." "The old distinction between the natural and the supernatural is an unfounded one, because all nature is but the coming to the birth of the Divine Life which lies embosomed in nature."-THOMAS GRIffiths, Studies of the Divine Master. OH, the peace and joy of having attained some blessed height, in surety of faith, whence to look undismayed on all that history, that criticism, that science may discover! "Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere LUCRETIUS, ii. 7. We may attain that height; possess faith, unshaken by earth's convulsions; faith, enduring to life's end, loving, trusting, reverencing-built on the knowledge that the clusters of imagination in Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare; the light of reason in Socrates, Plato, Bacon, Newton; the Divinity in Moses, Isaiah, Daniel; were regenerating energies for the world. Unbelievers are well aware, if acquainted with modern science, that natural phenomena or material existences are the raiment or visible appearance of some inner |