Thence we pass through a desert of vast inconceivable space, to those binary, triple and multiple systems, where sun moves round sun, with trains of planets and satellites, glorious creations making God's infinite mansion to sparkle with splendour. Separated, star from star, by enormous intervals of black or stippled ground; the intervals themselves open, so that the revelation of depth and height is rich indeed to the imagination; but, seen by our unaided eye, the whole splendour of many worlds is but a sparklet, or the scintillation of a needle-point. There are different orders of vapours or fluid nebulæ, perhaps first germs of worlds and systems, in infinite series, leading upwards through stages of process into suns and stars; stars that seem to be members of a new system of higher order; orbs which have no dominating centre; proving the sky to be more various and complicated in structure than even the wisest thought. Cloudlets, whether gaseous, stellar, irregular, planetary, ring-formed, or elliptic; and those light forms of the Milky Way; with shapes fixed or variable, governed by that unseen mysterious influence-gravity. There a green star with deep blood-red companion; there, one of orange hue, accompanied by blue or purple satellite; white mingled with red, light, or dark; purple, ruby, and vermillion; as "a casket of variously coloured precious stones." Then, how far soever the spirit flies, finally stopping at the centre of centres, the centre of creation, the capital of the universe, whence are the laws which govern and uphold all worlds. Who shall describe that throne of might! that palace of splendour! that inner abode of Deity! What line shall measure, what space contain, what time can reckon, the roll, the circle, the vast procession of millions of clustered suns and systems revolving round the presence chamber of the Almighty! What painter could picture, what poet describe, what heart conceive, the beautiful grandeur of that source whence flow infinite and eternal streams of goodness!

Is it a dream, these worlds crowding the sky with more, and exceeding gorgeous dwellings, than any earthly city of myriad abodes? Will they pass away from thought, and leave no trace, as the baseless fabric of a vision? No: all

have their use, and carry into the invisible universe certain memories and memorials of the past as were every star a visible footprint of God. We look upon them from our dwelling, as records of the past, joining present and future transactions into that vast consciousness by which intelligent creatures discern the course of time. We remember what of love and fear, of joy and sorrow, dwell in one heart; how many hearts throb in the little star of Earth, and how numberless are the greater stars; until, translated in spirit by the wonderful, the soaring view, our souls full of grateful memories approach the eternal.

Oh! "to have

Attentive and believing faculties.
To go abroad rejoicing in the joy
Of beautiful and well created things;

To love the voice of waters, and the sheen
Of silver fountains leaping to the sea;
To thrill with the rich melody of birds
Living their life of music, to be glad

In the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm;

To see a beauty in the stirring leaf,

And find calm thoughts beneath the whispering tree,

To see, and hear, and breathe the evidence

Of God's deep wisdom in the natural world!"

N. P. WILLIS.

STUDY V.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THEORY OF RULE.

"We will trust God, the blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into,
With pillar'd marble rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane's complete,
The world has no perdition, if some loss.”

E. B. BROWNING.

THALES (B.C. 636) considered that water was the source and continuer of life. Diogenes, of Apollonia (B.C. 400), said the air was άpyń, a beginning, a soul, such as philosophers sought, evolving itself in all life. Democritus (B.C. 460-357) taught that nothing existed but atoms and empty space, all else is mere opinion. Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) asserted that the mechanical shock of atoms is the all-sufficient cause of things. It was early maintained by Empedocles (he flourished B.C. 450), that the fittest survive, and unfit combinations rapidly disappear. Thence, till our own time, a few scientific men have held that "Nature does all things, does them of herself without God." "The mechanical shock and interaction of atoms trying of motions and unions from all eternity, without any determination by intelligent design, account sufficiently for the constitution and phenomena of the universe." Atoms, individually dead, without sensation and intelligence, get up of themselves, run together, and being together, form all actual and imaginable combinations, as if under a drill-master, without a drill-master. Every one, by itself, is dead; yet, together, they live. When apart they are without sensation, and possess no intelligence; but, collectively, they possess sensation, are full of wisdom, and form the universal mind-if there is any mind. We are told, "The physical philosopher can know nothing but matter, force, space, and necessity." Were we not sure that

there is indeed Intelligence at the heart of things, these men with their theories, which place our feet on the rungs of a ladder, the reverse of Jacob's, and leading to the antipodes of heaven, would make us say

Men, who believe anything that is not in Scripture, assert that all things exist by "a continual becoming," and that this intelligible hypothesis explains everything-"matter being eternal." Then we are told,-" Matter itself, as generally conceived, does not necessarily exist, but may be only a phenomenal centre of energy;" indeed, "matter is but the hypothetical mode of our own consciousness." This is delightfully clear,-naught is everything and everything is naught.

Some discern in matter "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life;" but, nevertheless, the "chasm" between our consciousness and this matter "must ever remain intellectually impassable." 'Everything may be explained on mechanical principles;" yet, certainly things exist which are not material. "The so-called 'imponderables,' things of old supposed to be matter-such as heat, light, etc., are now known by the purely experimental, and therefore the only safe method to be but varieties of what we call 'energy." In maintenance of this principle it is affirmed, "There is one energy, and that is mechanical;" chemical energy is mechanical, only something different. “A living organism is entirely mechanical," but with its mechanical and chemical relations, has something else which is not like matter, nor like mechanical force. It may be fairly questioned by plain men, whether science is not hindered by such statements; chemical energy is something more than mechanical power, if, at the same time, it is something different; and a living organism is not wholly mechanical if it contains something not explainable by mechanics.

1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 17: P. G. Tait.

A professor supposes, "that by the different grouping of the same units, and then by combination of the unlike groups, each with its own, or each with other kinds, you get everything else;" another professor talks about "Nature's great progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will," and the thing is done. The former professor gravely assuring us, "the system is now complete, no further advance in the same direction is probable or required. The latter stating, those who do not accept it have not kept pace with recent advances in natural history, are behind in science, and generally unworthy of consideration. So there is causality, but no cause; power, but no person; rule, but no ruler; and we are to graduate under Mephistopheles, who said,

The physical action which accompanies vital and mental changes is said to be an undulatory displacement of molecules, resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of movement, so that states of consciousness are attended by the transmission of a number of little waves from one nervecell to another. Now, because life and consciousness and thought thus act on our bodies, we are told that the unit of motion is identical with the unit of feeling; that between the two there is such an unfailing parallelism that the one group of phenomena can be correctly described by formulas invented to describe the other group. Why, it is equal to the absurdity of saying that the oscillations of a needle are identical with magnetism, and that the two are to be recognised as one. These material phenomena are modes in which our existence reveals itself. They are not the occult reality, but the effects; and it may be that if we could know the intimate essence of our own mind, we might have a glimpse of that Inscrutable Existence of whom the universe is a multiform manifestation.

We are told," Life essentially consists in the continuous adjustment of relations within the organism to relations in