the noblest animals attain some similitude to that moral condition which constitutes man an immortal being. Take the dog, mark what generosity, what courage he will put on, when sustained by man (Bacon, "Essay on Atheism"). In the poorest parish schools of our land is a noble spectacle of gradational ascent surpassing that by architect, statuary, painter, constructing temples, statues, likenesses: it is that which enables the souls of little children to apprehend and love the living God. This, to him who has insight, is a grander view than the loftiest European cathedral, its spires all resplendent with rays of the rising and setting sun.

The hidden principles at work in these marvels are more or less understood according to the student's proportion of scientific and Scriptural culture. To some men, life—all life, is a divine matter: to others—it grows by chance or fate, and presents no riddle—though they know not Whence, nor Why, nor Whither, it is tending? Pass from individuals to nations-The Greeks were in earnest, and brought forth from their study of natural principle a radiant smiling fleshly grace of Life, embodied by sculptor's chisel in figures of immortal beauty. One class of Oriental mind, specially the Magi, found a principle of semi-sensual grandeur and splendour in Life; and, occasionally, terrible form of glowing fire, sometimes purifying, sometimes consuming, on background of infinite darkness. A better class of Orientalism discerned that the spirit of Life and Nature was something of Heaven. We moderns endeavour to unite science and sacred emotion in one and the same intellect. The process is somewhat as follows. By science we discern that, naturally, the Earth is mother, and the Sun

is father of all living. From the ground, unorganized, proceeded those germs which, quickened by heat and light from heaven, advanced to primal life on earth. This life flowed in two streams: the one a river for all vegetation, the other a stream of animal existence. All primal germs, so far as we know, were and are essentially the same; yet the same are not the same-within the sameness are elements of marvellous diversity. Evolution, so far as verified, traces this varied life from one and the same structureless life-matter-acted upon by powers coming from on high. The growth is always chiefest along lines in the direction of least resistance, or in obedience to impulse of most active vital energy. The progress may be rectilinear, or diagonal, or curved, or circular, or spiral, or in any other form, indeed the sub-kingdoms exhibit every conceivable mode of advance. Another series of facts is occasionally observed in connection with the process of evolution—the accomplishment of great changes, and advance, or retrogression, with least expenditure of time. This accounts for the leaps by which several stages of the ordinary process are not unfrequently jumped over, and explains the absence of intermediary forms. Every process goes forth in secret, from silent and imperceptible operations, toward an end which seems aimed at from the beginning; and every form of life is the accumulation of infinite. adaptations.

We now advance to that which is more reconditethe mind. To see and to hear with the spirit those infinitesimal creatures measured by lengths of luminiferous waves, and to comprehend the continual becoming of things into that which they are not, require a sense over

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and above the ordinary five-a sixth sense-insight. In like manner, to discern everywhere and in everything the All-knowing, the All-working, in whom all things move and have their being, is to possess that Spirit, vous, called also alonos, moral sense, which becomes a divine magnetism, drawing a man heavenward, so that he consciously lays hold of eternal life. Then he traces to the Almighty One all that is created, to the Living One all that lives, to the Self-conscious Spirit all that is spiritual, rational, personal, in the world.

Thus to think, is not that bringing together of the true and the false out of which men manufacture the plausible. The most cautious mathematicians admit into their calculations quantities which, by their own showing, are imaginary or impossible; and have to form new algebras which possess no counterpart in reality, yet are means of arrival not only at possibles but actuals. Clear-headed men are engaged in problems like the following:-Measure a line in one direction, or in the opposite; reckon time forward or backward; perform an operation, or reverse it; do it, or undo it. If, having once reversed one of these processes, we reverse it a second time, we shall find that we come back to the original direction of measurement, or of reckoning, or of original operation. Suppose now that, at some stage of a calculation, our formula indicates an alteration such that, if the alteration be repeated, a condition of things not the same as, but the reverse of, the original will be produced; or suppose that time is to be reckoned some way different from future and past, but still in a way having some definite algebraical connection with time that is gone and with time to come. It is clear that

actual experience affords no process to which such measurements of space and time respond: nevertheless, we attain abstract definite points of issue concerning space and infinitude, time and eternity; and ought to give a rational account of the puzzle. The difficulty is partially removed if we say, "The formulæ are more comprehensive than their assigned signification; but, on a more enlarged basis, the formulæ may be capable of interpretation. The difficulties, indeed, indicate that there must be some more comprehensive statement of the problem including cases impossible in the more limited, things unknowable in the known, and an approach to the incomprehensible Godhead by human.

reason."

These imaginaries, called up by legitimate processes of science, conduct to other practical conclusions. Take, for example, Professor James Thompson's machine, which, invented by his imaginative faculty, he makes, by friction of a disc, a cylinder, and a ball, to effect a variety of complicate calculations, and an unskilled hand to do the work of ten arithmeticians. No machinery, however, can effect the work of a living organism, which instantaneously converts dead matter into living substance, giving it a nucleus, and within that a nucleolus. From these little wells, or founts of life— which may exist and work, strange to say, without cellwall or centre, in less than every portion of the fivehundredth part of an inch in our body-proceed the threads of nerves, of arteries, of muscle, of bone, and all the mechanism of our system. The same causes not producing the same results, the difference in results being indeed measureless; yet, the bioplasm always the

same, so far as we know, in every tissue. Not only does the mystic play weave fibre round fibre spirally, the whole complexity of tissue is woven together into a conscious responsible being, able to know God, to glorify God, and enjoy Him. The result of the process wrought by hidden things, is well stated by Berkeley ("Second Dialogue," "What delicacy, what contrivance, what beauty in animal and vegetable bodies! How exquisitely are all things suited as well to their particular ends, as to constitute opposite parts of the whole! and while they mutually aid and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other?"

Our process of thought reveals hidden principles which science cannot explain, proves that the definiteness of mathematics becomes fictitious if all its conclusions are pressed as necessarily and essentially containing the whole of nature. Beyond the range of subject-matters, not perfectly uniform, strict use of the science will hinder-not help thought. Neither chemistry nor mathematics explains life, they do but reveal mysteries which pass all understanding. The mechanical system may possibly be a sort of ballast to our aspirations concerning purity, spiritual life, and Divine Life, but must not be allowed to weaken those receptive, perceptive, and constructive faculties of consciousness by means of which we discern objective reality in things that are incapable of physical embodiment. We, so to speak, change our magnet, and pass through various bodily mental and emotional states in ourselves; then, experimenting, transform water to gases, and gases to water; unfold and refold the textures of organisms. in our study of life. Beyond this we are unable to