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Existence of Matter.

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directed by the spirit of true humility, and with a prayer for God's blessing, advance us in our knowledge of God, and prepare us to receive the revelation of His will with profounder reverence."1 With reverence, therefore, we ask, nor can we help asking, "Whence, and to what end is this matter?" In the first page of Scripture, matter and spirit are placed in essential opposition. The space between the two is, indeed, no yawning gulf, but spanned by creative will when the visible. comes forth from the invisible. Matter is substance in the lowest form, which every act of the Divine Spirit brings nearer to the final glorification.

We are told, however, that "the creation of matter is unthinkable, even as the annihilation of matter is unthinkable;" "there is neither more nor less matter in the universe now than there was in the beginning;" in fact, "as to matter, there cannot have been any beginning as there cannot be any ending." These assertions are nothing more than hypotheses. In the first place, that which is unthinkable cannot be so thought out as to become an unquestionable proposition of the highest certainty. In the second place, the capacity or incapacity of the human mind cannot, in any sense, measure or set boundaries to Divine action. In the third place, the existence of matter is as inconceivable as its non-existence; we only know of matter by energy, and of energy by consciousness, and of consciousness as a sign of the Unknown behind it. This Unknown makes our consciousness aware that it is abstractedly possible for energy to compress matter to such an extent as to be without limit; and thus, as the space occupied is indefinitely decreased, and the space unoccupied indefinitely increased, even though we may not be able to conceive matter reduced to nothing, we can and do get an approximate conception; and we get no more than an approximate conception even of those things which we pretend to know fully. To say that creation of matter out of nothing is unthinkable is merely this-that we don't know how to do it, nor how anyone else can do it.

Matter is in the world, and the pious mind conceives it came there because the Supreme Mind so willed. Socrates 1 Sir Robert Inglis, British Association, 1847.

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said that he was in prison of his own will awaiting death, but his muscles and bones of their own will would have gone off to Megara or to Boeotia,-" By the dog of Egypt they would, if they had been guided by their own ideas, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to undergo any punishment which the State inflicts." The mind of Socrates willed his body into the prison-house. Divine energy brought matter into existence to be, in its manifold shapes, the visible outer-works of an invisible universe.

Transitions and transformations from these two worlds are constantly in progress. The ultimate particles of matter are, therefore, permeable and permeated by the invisible and immaterial, so that the material world points to that certainty towards which all intelligence tends, and we arrive at the fact-long declared by Scripture and now proclaimed by science—that through all agencies works the Unknown Cause.

Natural phenomena are consequently physical signals of an ever-present energy, and afford analogies whereby we rise to the conception, at least in some degree, of existences absolutely immaterial and spiritual. It may be asserted, “We cannot argue from one state to the other," nevertheless, the connection between mind and matter is intimate, and our consciousness of identity, linking the invisible with the visible, the past with the present, forms a sound basis for argument. We are unable to attain the principle containing in itself, but not identical with all the various complicated conditions which evolve the seen from the unseen ; but may represent them, not by that simplicity of motion once considered to be possessed by the planets in their repeated circular motion, but by those now known curves of complicity wherein all the various motions are contained, consequent on the unsymmetrical distribution of forces around the planetary bodies. As a matter of fact, we are acquainted in the visible world with the transfer of one grade of being to another, can conceive of a translation from some other state to this, from this to some state connected with it. We can imagine the change of visible or invisible energy into heat, some potential, 1 "Plato:" Dr Jowett's Translation.

The Visible World Permeated by the Invisible. 57

some kinetic, then build up the natural conception by a notion of gas or vapour indefinitely diffused, condensing either by contraction or by diminution of heat, until a liquid is formed, then regard the process as visible by which a liquid passes into a solid. In this way a scientifically exercised imagination obtains a view of the passage of things from the unseen to the seen, and how the operation of energy in and upon the matter of the universe produces those infinite varieties of existence which adorn and enrich the visible dominions of God.

The same fact as to spirit and matter may be otherwise thought of, seeing that different orders of being pervade the grosser and more material; that all kinds of attractions and affinities exist where none could be expected; that mind, incorporate with matter, acts upon it and is reacted upon; that the partitions between the visible and invisible are pierced, so that human intelligence permeates from one to the other; and as it is an unworthy imagination that infinite space contains nothing but matter infinitesimal in comparison, we arrive at the conception that not only human but other finite intelligences may pass and repass as the Supreme Intelligence arranges. The conception is scientific, not superstitious. Such passage from the unseen to the seen, from the immaterial to the material, is in perfect agreement with the existing arrangement of worlds, and to such an extent, that the actions and passings of electricity, magnetism and light out of invisible state and place into perceptible condition, are a material analogue of spiritual migration and mutation.

We may have a sort of embodiment as to this by experiment. Take a glass tube, 3 feet long by 3 inches wide, perfectly cleanse it, and follow the example of Professor Tyndall in his experiments on light. Roll a small bit of bibulous paper into a pellet not a fourth of the size of a small pea, moisten it with a liquid of higher boiling point than water. Hold the pellet in your fingers till it is almost dry, then place it in a small pipe serving for the introduction of gas into the main tube, and allow dry air to pass over it into this tube. The air charged with the modicum of vapour thus taken up will, when subjected to the action of light, begin immediately to form a blue actinic cloud, and in five minutes the

blue colour will extend quite through the tube. At the end of fifteen minutes the blue becomes a dense white cloud filling the tube.

Nor is that all; take away the pellet, empty the tube, sweep it by passing a current of dry air through it, and fill it again with the vapour of hydrochloric acid. Now, though the amount of "light generating matter" is almost infinitesimal, yet, when the electric lamp pours light through the tube, in one minute a faint cloud shows itself, grows in beauty, and in fifteen minutes the body of light is astounding.

When we think of the small amount of vapour carried in by the air at the first experiment, the appearance of a cloud so massive and luminous seems like the creation of a world out of nothing, and is, at least we may think so, a beautiful example of the material texture out of which was framed the visible world by Invisible Mind. As to the second experiment, our own intelligence directing the light that reveals existence of which we were before unconscious, not only yields an example of a passage from the unseen to the seen, but affords a symbol of the passing and repassing of those mysterious influences, under guidance of the Eternal, which are so active in the existing arrangement of worlds.

It is agreeable to every faculty of our mental and physical powers, that we should thus seek to view the mysterious passage from one state of things to another, the connection of former states with our present existence, and ascertain whether our faculties are at the end of the series. They are not at the end; every physical experiment, and every mental inquiry, prove that we are only beginning to know. Our sense of Divinity has feeling rather than knowledge for its basis. We are on the threshold of creation, in the childhood of intellectual and spiritual life; nevertheless, even now, "the soul," says Francis Newman, "is that side of our nature which is in relation with the Infinite; therefore, we are the amalgam of two substances;" or, as Isaac Taylor states, " a mean, essentially unlike what could have resulted from any possible construction of one by itself;" and, by this compounding of mind with matter, we control both, and acquire

Science Throws Light on Scripture.

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the power to conquer and possess new worlds, to pass from sonship as to man unto sonship as to God.

"The wind, before it woos the harp,

Is but the wild and tuneless air;
Yet, as it passes through the chords,
Changes to music rare."

There are those who think that science can neither contradict nor affirm what is taught by Scripture as to the beginning of things, and of creation; and as "it is unworthy timidity in the lover of Scripture to fear contradiction, so it is ungrounded presumption to look for a confirmation in such cases; but as science is undoubtedly able, with some accuracy, to retrace the past, when the earth was not, no religious man should stand outside while she reverently uncovers the inner works and mysteries of the world. Such revelation as to the works is worthy of all acceptation for enlightenment as to the words. "So far as we can judge, no one will demonstrate what was the primitive state from which the progressive course of the earth took its origin. . . . We cannot, in any of the palæontological sciences, ascend to a beginning which is of the same nature as the existing course of events, and which depends upon causes that are still in operation. Philosophers never have demonstrated, and probably never will be able to demonstrate, what was the original condition of the solar system, of the earth, of the vegetable and animal worlds, of languages, of arts." Despite all this, it is possible to obtain knowledge of past creations; for we detect processes of aggregation which are even now building up new worlds. Processes "leading, according to the position and perhaps the character of the masses acted upon, to the formation of suns of greater or less splendour and magnitude, of streams and clusters of small stars, and of systems in which suns and stellar streams and clusters seem to be intermingled." There are waning worlds and waxing worlds at the present moment, dried up as the moon, fertile as the earth, semi-fluid as Saturn, or cloud form as Nebulæ. They lie between the ruins of worlds that

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"Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,” vol. i., p. 688 : Wm. Whewell, D.D. 2 "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,” vol. i., p. 688: Wm. Whewell, D.D. Richard A. Proctor.

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