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vast capacity for the Divine, becomes a shrunk and almost powerless organ.

Things and existences are natural and supernatural in a threefold form: the continuing power, the degenerating power, the developing power.

The continuing power is grandly represented by natural uniformity, indestructibility of matter and energy, universal rhythmic force. The source is in the Unknown, the Infinite, the Eternal: the continuance, the permanence is natural in every part; and, in every part, supernatural.

Not that natural circumstances are so balanced that they influence neither for better nor worse; for worlds and universes, taken at large, will, if left to the play of physical energies, come to a universal standstill; everything in the worlds decays and dies. There is a silent drifting movement which impels downward—a degeneration. Naturally, it is a reversion from higher to lower forms, from specialities to generalities. Theologically, it is a gravitation, or bias, towards evil. When this degeneration obtains full sway, sunshine, air, moisture, which formerly ministered to growth and beauty, are the agents of decay and death. The sum total of the functions which maintained life are made a signature to the sentence of death; and the sentence is executed along the whole path of existence. The soul that sinneth dieth; and whatever is unwatched, untended, unredeemed by help, falls away, sinks below its own nature. Whatever is not worthy of its nature is adjudged to a lower place by a power overruling nature.

It is sheer affectation to speak of this physical and spiritual truth as beyond the sphere of comprehension.

We know of it, as of and about the execution of sentences against violation of laws. If we grow tares, we shall not garner wheat. If we do not cultivate in summer, we shall not thrive in winter. The way of safety, of salvation, is to stop this drifting process; to turn, make it act the other way; and, then, our resolute hold of the upward power, our co-operation with the developing, elevating influence, redeems life. Our strength, so put forth, is a counterpart of that energy by which the ground, the seed, the plant, the animal, responds to and rewards the skill and labour of man. That which will not open out to improvement must suffer loss. There is darkness, and there is life. It may seem true to a man, that there is no God; but it is because he, having chosen the darkness, cannot see. "Every soul is a Book of Judgment, and Nature, as a recording angel, marks there every sin." The signs may be small in measurement, but the interpretations are illimitable; a spirit of light leads onward to noblest issues; and every parent, as he grieves over the death of his child, is glad to use the words of Robert Burns

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"Oh, sweet be thy sleep in the land of the grave,

My dear little angel, for ever;

For ever-oh, no! let not man be a slave,
His hopes from existence to sever.

"My child, thou art gone to the home of thy rest,

Where sufferings no longer can harm ye,

Where the songs of the good, where the hymns of the blest,
Through an endless existence shall charm thee."

On the Death of a Favourite Child.

1 Henry Drummond, "Natural Law in the Spiritual World: Degeneration."

RESEARCH XV.

THE INWARD VISION.

“There is, to the seeing eye, an inexhaustible meaning in everything ; and to every mind, a world of wonders, as the mind brings understanding. The world is not Belial's universe; but a city of the Great King, who gives guidance and blessing in return for loving obedience. Evil is some imprisoned good working unto liberty.”—A Reflection.

"A little longer still-Patience, Belovèd:

A little longer still, ere Heaven unroll

The Glory, and the Brightness, and the Wonder,
Eternal and Divine, that awaits thy Soul!”

ADELAIDE Anne Procter, A Little Longer. "Thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”—John xiii. 7.

WHEN we set our brains toward the measurement of exteriors, the most striking thing in the world is the seeming prodigality of waste. Take life as an example. Plants and animals, particularly the lower forms, produce myriads and myriads more than come to such maturity as to have offspring of their own. Eggs, seeds, young things, perish by millions. The waste of life is like the waste of light and heat; infinitely more is squandered than is used. After a while, this prodigality of diffusion gathers meaning. The spreading of light, heat, and other energies, the dissipation of every known form of matter, makes the infinitude—which might, otherwise, be a dead equilibrium-an exhaustless storehouse;

whence are drawn renewals for present worlds, and specializations and powers for the worlds to come. How vast, how wonderful, these transformations will be, can be learned from the fact that all things are dissipated into space, as were the present an alphabet for formation of some great future language.

"Remember, friend,

The things that might be always underlie

The things that are; things possible, things real."

Bickersteth, Yesterday, To-day, and for Ever, 148–150.

In the continual passing away and return of things, law always prevails. Every bit of the world, every part and period of the universal process, tends not only to the use of that which is nigh, but is adjusted to, and balanced with, all possible and actual events; science lives everywhere, and spiritual truth is both basis and crown, not less in the things of time than those of space. Judging from the past, and into what the present is advancing, the existing universe is as an infant in the Arms of the Almighty. Dead elements live in us, then they think in us; or we live and think in them; and, the more so, as we live and think in God. Inward vision warrants the idea that all things are being exalted into the capacity of worship and praise: the world is not only orderly, it is progressive; and, even now, we can say of man

"Thou canst touch on all the notes

God set between His After and Before,

And strike up, and strike off the general roar

Of the rushing worlds, a melody that floats

In a serene air purely."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, xvii.

In the order and progress we discern an arrange

ment of mathematical exactitude and highest beauty. Were the worlds merely machines, they would run themselves down; if fires only, they would burn out; but they are so arranged with powers of sustainment and renewal, by inrush of external substance and force, that we count on the existing arrangement as permanent; and make calculations concerning an almost immeasurable past, and a not less future. Inward vision confirms the highest ideals of science. The works of the Eternal are not for nought, will not be snuffed out; but continue by means of infinite transformations, even as He wills; until

“Thou comest, O Almighty, King of kings,
And stillest all the tumult of the years,

And tak'st each babbler to Thy Breast at last."

Herbert E. Clarke, King of Kings.

Reason demands that we scientifically interpret the worlds, but that same reason shows there is more than physical science can deal with. We do not know how the dead pass into life, or how the gulf between matter and spirit is bridged over; but as life and thought, matter and spirit, are part of us, we rightly know of God by our sense of His presence in us. We know of Him as we know of everything else. It is wordjugglery to arrange an argument as if the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Absolute, were wholly out of relation with the universe and with man; for, if so, He would not be all that those large words mean. If God were apart from the universe, He would not be infinite, nor supreme, nor omniscient; there would be that which He knew not of, had not

caused, did not

guide. Such a god is not our God. The outspread

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