continued, would not be accounted natural? But who knows that anything is natural? To call a thing "natural" is to pronounce it divine, or to make the word a cloak for ignorance. Scales, feathers, hair, fin, wing, limb, claw, paw, hand, are formed in successive processes of foetal life, and by series of modifications, so small, that only the microscope can reveal the secret transformation. Changes into hoof or hand, into gill or lung, specialities of structure, variously adapted, and passage of lowest forms into highest and furthest differentiation within a few months, not by confusion of parts, but by variety of design, are that natural process whose initiation and continuance no one can explain.

Pass from the phenomena of life into those of mind, a region still more profoundly mysterious.

By union with matter, mind takes possession of a new world, doubling its powers of action, and extending its sphere of existence. Corporeal existence may indeed be the basis of intellectual activity, of moral agency, and of sociality among all created intelligent beings. When we consider the exquisite sensations of organised existence, the alliance with various properties of solidity and extension, the mechanical and animal indices of motion, the new consciousness of duration by collation of mental history with the equable motion and symphony of time in that vast horology, that register of duration, the material universe, we may conceive that body is to mind a means of existence serving such important ends, and carrying such consequences, as make it the general, if not universal, law of finite existence in all worlds: first, the natural, then the spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 44, 45). We are conscious that energy and activity are infused into the most exalted of our moral sentiments by their alliance with animal sensations. If we were only animals, we should neither need nor possess an imaginative faculty. If intellectual only, or moral only, we should disregard as degrading or illusory whatever presented less than absolute truth, reason, and rectitude. Imagination and its sensibilities do now, however, abate or stimulate every function of life; mingle with and yet further ennoble the highest and purest of our intellectual and moral feelings; so that we possess the germ and instinctive expectation of another

Union of Mind with Matter.

ΙΟΙ

and a higher mode of existence. This future and unseen world, brought thus into definite alliance with us, is as simply natural and true as the present nature. Our consciousness, our religious conceptions, our instinctive yearnings, take away the dim remoteness from the world to come, and connect our own homely land of trees and water with the momentous transactions of the future. The Bible, in telling us of our three stages of life-in the body, out of the body, clothed with spiritual body,-brings the visible and invisible worlds into that conjunction which the wisest and best of men accept as obvious and natural.

As to our own intelligence, it is certain that coming into contact with a corporeal state is not a degradation; and doubtless reveals a new sphere and mysterious power of influence, with various sentiments and modes of action, that would otherwise be wholly foreign to incorporeal existence. This means of quickening peculiar knowledge and varied action, bringing imaginative sentiments into alliance with animal sensations, their intermixture with ideas of beauty and order, not only forms part of our own training and transformation, but may have formed part of that discipline under which some angels fell, and by means of which some were exalted. We are not to apply this to those superior intelligences as if they, by any incorporation with gross matter, could attain a higher nature; but, without discussing the nature of their "spiritual body," or contemplating the possibility of spirits having come from a pre-existent state into the new order of things on earth; it is not inconceivable that even archangels round the throne of God may be connected with the energy, motion, heat and light of the universe, providential arrangements and occurrences (Ps. civ. 4; Heb. i. 7). The material universe may be the clock by which spirits become conscious of the lapse of duration; while the revolution of worlds, with their creative, sustentative, and renewing processes, make known another depth of the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 9-11), fitting them to be abler ministers to do His pleasure, and rendering them wiser agents in His Providence.

Great minds, discoverers of universal laws-Copernicus, who marked out the true path of our sun and earth amongst

celestial worlds; Kepler, who defined the curve described by the planets around their central luminary; Newton, who was able to fix the condition unique and supreme, whence results the equilibrium of worlds-did not study the universe as subject in all its movements to blind necessity, as were there no law, nor wisdom, nor beauty, nor harmony. Their investigation was a search for simplicity with comprehensiveness; and when the discovery of admirable symmetry and universal harmony established the all-pervading sway of power and wisdom, they bowed before the eternal throne, and worshipped Him who sat thereon. Their knowledge is now our own, and illumines the way to Him by whom our imperfections are to have remedy, our spiritual hopes are to be satisfied, and our yearnings after immortality are to be realised. What saith one of our students of science? "I protest that, if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I would instantly close with the offer." This he says unaware that the thing is done for the willing; not by degradation into a piece of mechanism, but by re-creation into the likeness of God. (1 Cor. i. 30.)

If the effect of exact science and advanced modern philosophy is to make a man to wish he were "a sort of clock," and made, even against his will, to "think what is true and do what is right," what a proof this is of Scripture-that we have all gone astray! How small, as to real value, are secular science and philosophy in comparison with the truth and moral power possessed by the real Christian who knows that his sins are forgiven, that he receives grace to resist temptation, and that he is being disciplined by the Spirit of God!

"These are truths that wake

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor man, nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy."

WM. WORDSWORTH.

That we are under the guidance of a Wise and Beneficent 1 "On Descartes' Discourse:" Prof. Huxley.

Power may be clearly shown. There is an orderly operation in the universe which produces other definite sequences and results. The law of the origin and progress of many and enormously extended series of natural phenomena has been attained with such accuracy and thoroughness, that we can prophecy their course with the greatest certainty; and, where the conditions are in our own power, direct them according to our will. By that one simple law of gravitation regulating the movements of the heavenly bodies, we determine and predict to a fraction of a minute, for past and futureyears, the motions of bodies distant and complex as the double, triple, and multiple stars. Knowledge extends our view to regions whence light, the quickest of all messengers, needs many years to reach the eye. We subject to our will the powers of a world greatly unfamiliar, partly hostile, and have their use for our reward. That which we grasp, or see, or hear, every thought or emotion of mind or heart, makes us conscious of things and processes of operation which our intellect, if sufficiently expanded, would be able to follow from beginning to end. The array of the external world, our own natural powers, all thought and emotion, or whatever goes to produce consciousness, and those sacred longings for pure and endless life, with the mysterious force of conscience, proclaim the great fact that the ponderous and wonderful mechanism of the world is the product of some great Governing Mind.

A leader in science, and deservedly a leader in physics, has given his own revelation of world-government. The figure is startling and daring,—“The chess-board is the world, the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The Player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair and just and patient. But we know to our cost that He never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man that plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse." Shrinking from his own words, the Professor says,-They are like a picture of Satan

1 "Liberal Education:" Prof. Huxley.

playing chess for the soul of a man, and "would substitute for that mocking fiend a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win." Afterwards, forsaking the angel, he says of our life's training,—“It is a rough kind of education, one in which ignorance is treated like disobedience, incapacity is punished as a crime; it is not a word and a blow, but the blow first without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed."

In a sense, all this is true. If we break nature's laws we must pay nature's penalties. We have heard such wisdom from men ere this. Wisdom must be far purer and more spiritual if it is to strengthen and comfort us. Why not say, "Nature is by the will of God; he who breaks nature's laws breaks God's law for the uses and wants of our earthly being?" Clever words, well said, have salt in their wit—are pleasant and preservative. We like to hear them, but jesting speeches do not take from upright minds that distressing uneasiness concerning the great moral system, which is their present greatest trial.

All reasonable beings would gladly believe that there is a God, all-wise, almighty, all-perfect; but the existence of evil causes doubt and perplexity. In vain we try to stifle the doubt: evil, misery, ruin in this world and the next; the trials of saints and the sorrows of martyrs; great men, good men, gifted men in anguish; render the world a waste, and our path through it, not a way of peace, but a darkling road amidst mountains of despair. Are beings called into existence, and irrevocably destined to endless unmitigated torture? Are we to charge God with such acts. of injustice and cruelty as render all the atrocity of men and excesses of the devil but exhibitions of perfect goodness in comparison? The doctrines of creation and Divine Rule render the fact more distressing, for they teach that every organism forms part of that grand design, or universal teleology, which includes whatever results from that design.

Having honestly exposed the difficulty, we candidly admit that, like many other mysteries of the universe, it is insoluble by our humble intelligence; but it is possible to give reasons for the existence of evil which, if they cannot remove the