This is true of our life, as to all things, always, and everywhere. Out of that curious structureless substance, bioplasm, one and the same for every organism, spring all the variations of form, and whatever diversity there is in life. A small speck may be before us, measurable within the hundredth part of an inch, and it emerges from the verge of nothing into the rich domain of life. It passes from no structure to simplicity of structure, and onward into complex physiology. Within the narrow compass of the animalcule's irritability and contractility are those unknown beginnings of nerve-force, which are the forerunners of whatever belongs to brain and mind. The mental power exhibited by the superior animals and man is by an energy stored up in the cells of the brain or nerve-centres, and acting through them. In the very beginning of life was the promise and power of all the life that now enriches the earth. The advance was by the coming of life into that which did not live; then, ever and ever, onward and higher; nor have we, yet, acquired all that is attainable. The initial manifestation of life is in a tiny cell, or even in no cell; and the progress from low to higher and highest is not by addition of cell to cell in a manner that can be mathematically calculated and mechanically analyzed; for under the sameness of substance and community of cells lie, or are imparted, all those different powers which cause variations in forms and diversities in life. Special limitations mark individuals and species by peculiar endowment of morphological force. There is everywhere a most intricate relationship; but, how and why we know not, force and matter of one kind transform themselves into force and matter of another kind. The Energy which fashions the worlds, spreads out the waters, rules the clouds, imparts life, effects subtle combinations, until by differentiation and elevation man appears—"the lord of creation." It must not be supposed that the differences between living and nonliving matter, consciousness and no consciousness, reason and unreason, are wrought by the same forces in the same degrees. It is well known that, identical as seem the forces which act from age to age, they are never the same for any two consecutive moments. By differentiation of matter and the surroundings, variation of the lines and intensities of forces, continual though apparently minute changes in surroundings, worlds are formed; human beings are fashioned; tears are rounded. Not only will the worlds, and all things therein, be made new in the future; we know that, moment by moment, all things pass on into newness. This seeming paradox is one of the greatest truths: the world, ever the same, is never the same. Besides the advances effected by Nature in the compositions of earths, metals, crystals, plants, animals, men; are those which human art and science give rise to ; to these must be added those peculiar progresses whereby birds learned to sing, dogs to bark, and every animal acquired its own language. A natural cultivation, and a something more than natural, has been productive of higher powers. The most advanced, and capable of greatest further advance, are men. View it in the way of intelligence. See, in somewhat simple way, that the mind, going forward, learns the boundlessness of its powers; con sciously enlarges as to view of the range for which it is created; enters new spheres of thought; combines anew multiplied and formerly hidden relations into fresh and higher forms of precise and definite knowledge concerning ages and worlds to come. View, then, the simple way. Galvani, with different metals, touched the muscles of a frog; and noted the responses. The meaning remained a long while hidden. When revealed, we took possession of new arts, new sciences; flashed intelligence from London to New York; conversed, the same day, with Paris and Rome, Berlin and Vienna; time and space were, in part, annihilated. Those little muscular twitches acquainted us with some of the mightiest and gentlest forces in the universe-forces that pierce the interstellar spaces, and return with tidings from the infinite. As every particle of matter is now revealed to be a concentration of immensity; every leaf, a miniature world; every insect, a miracle of life; man is in possession of the boundless. He finds an actual presence in his soul, of faculties to enter worlds which are grouped afar off. In the far-sight and foresight, by which he knows of them, is an anticipatory crowning and enthronement. He could not know of the infinite, were there no infinite; nor of other worlds, did none exist; nor acquaint himself with the eternal, without an eternal. There is, consequently, a necessary correspondence of the external and the internal; mutual action of the without and the within; and this very apprehension by our own continued personal mental unity, by which we remain ourselves despite every change, is a real entity. The faculties by which we apprehend the infinite and eternal are, by that very apprehension, not only in relation with them, but partly in possession of them. Man is not a den wherein two enemies are chained together, but an imperishable being; organized in a body of varying matter, endowed with some permanent essential substance. We do not know how otherwise to explain our sense of fellowship with God, and of new life in new worlds. The common arithmetical symbols with which all are acquainted, and the less-known algebraical signs, deal with numbers, combinations, space, magnitudes; and, in their use, transcending that use, we sum infinite series, and excel arithmetic by high mental determination of universal principles. We drink of the spring of life; then, piercing beyond the depths, learn whence all things flow. We eat of the grain from tawny sheaves, we breathe of the air that fans our cheek, rejoice in the shining sun; and then, though ignorant as a child in a palace, by means of nourishment from that grain, by inspiration of that air, by high use of that sunlight, we gaze at heights and depths of truths which attract and terrify. We delight in the illimitable perspectives of the past, the present, the future. Refusing to follow the atheist into his nothingness of meaning, nothingness of reality, we find infinite truth and everlasting life. Our human faculties are the mental instruments, types of those mechanical by which as with hands we handle, and with eyes we see, the invisible realities of the worlds to come. We drink "Fresh living water, The rock's bright daughter, Fresh from its fountain bursting; Come to the brink, Ho, every one that's thirsting. "But men with pride, The living spring forsake; Cisterns they fill, Hewn out with skill, From which their streams to take. "The broken cisterns will no water hold, The spring flows sparkling ever as of old." Jer. ii. 13: Manuscript of Rev. James Gylby Lonsdale, M.A. Two or more distinct sets of vibrations combine into that single yet composite picture of the external world produced on the retina; and of which we are conscious in ordinary vision. The beautiful result is not a product of mechanical sensation. Sensation is more than mechanical, it is aided by some mental act which converts it into use for the future. It is related to that other power of picturing when, consciousness of awful things being evoked by use of our higher powers, we discern invisibles; and, looking on darkness, such as the blind see, mysterious impressions produce vivid scenes of moving shadows, and of other forms that are bright with splendour. This weird power finds exhibition in a statue of the Tempter, which is placed at the side of one of the great doors of Strasbourg Cathedral. The thin, worn, wasted, sharpened features, the degenerating contractions of a once noble face; the compressed scorn of the lips, the strange dead smile, the clutching hand all but piercing the mantle, the revelation everywhere of "dumb misery within the twining snakes semishow;" will not be soon forgotten by him who has |