the more so as it confirms the fact of Divine Interference in the world's affairs being the very thing by which progress is effected. The progress showing that apparent continuous uniformity is consistent with advance. and eras of crises. Crises were many; these are a few of them : "the existence of matter in an invisible state ; the becoming visible in a gaseous condition, luminous and non-luminous; the rounding and condensing into worlds; the appearance of life, progressing from earliest stages to plant, to animal, to man." The physical, geological, biological record, is distinctly in favour of successive acts of the plastic and life-forces of nature. The interposing power is the Eternal, that recognized by science as the source of all things. Nature is as one organic harp; and life, diversely framed, is the music trembling into motion by the touch of one intellectual, vital, Almighty Energy, the God of all. As to life, more particularly, it progressed as all other phenomena; and if we attach due weight to the recapitulation of its history, as displayed in Embryology; there were leaps forward, and bounds from type to type, not so much by hybrids, as by metamorphosis and transformation. Things, as they are now, did not come into existence at once either individually or as a whole; nor do they die out at once. Organisms advance from rudimentary to developed stage; and their further passage into other states is not without signs that it is for survival-not extinction. A plant grows from its rudiments and produces stem, leaf, bud. In the flower, or that which serves as flower, the seed is formed by a life in the life of the plant, and capable of independent survival. Much the same process is seen in animal life. The old substance dissolves; but the force of life passes, with part of the material of its former habitation, into a new dwelling; and thus there is for every living thing a veritable survival of the life-force, and a resurrection of the body. Portions of crystals survive crystals; and, in favourable conditions, are built into a skeleton form, and then duly clothed. Plants and animals dissolve; but, by means of portions of their structure and transmitted force, live again, and the life is their own. So universal is this law, that science holds of all future material worlds, that the materials, the forces, the combinations, will be by survival of that which was and now is. We believe in such a manner as to say "we know," though the processes are invisible, that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we shall have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens (2 Cor. v. 1). We need not borrow symbols from the caterpillar. The fact is independent of all figure. By means of Embryology and by Scripture, we know that our life, our spirit-force, takes first to itself the form of a worm; outlasting this, little by little, the manly shape appears; and the force survives both the earliest form and latest shape. If not, all that we know about conservation of energy, and transformation of force, is a delusion and a snare. Our life contains the germs of a new being, and death is its transfer into a new state. is well to pluck these gracious flowers of hope and truth on the brink of that asserted nothingness, into which unbelief would cast us. The strains of life sound sweetly for all good men. We obey a natural impulse, we act according to strict and accurate science, by It believing that though our body dissolve and our soul depart we shall be "At large among the dead; Whether in Eden's bowers Jesus' sweet voice Wakes Abraham to rejoice, Or in some drearier scene His eye controls The thronging band of souls; That as His blood won earth, His agony Might set the shadowy realm from sin and sorrow free!" Christian Year: Easter Eve (adapted). In any case, it is well so to live that the after-life be a blessing, not a curse; for, indeed, it is a truth, certain as our own existence, and every man of science knows it, that even our thoughts affect and effect the matter of other worlds, and help to fashion their future state. Death is not destruction: no other power than that of God can make a full end of anything; and we are glad. We would not lose, this intellectual being; these thoughts that find a path in space, and undaunted enter worlds and worlds eternal. From wild and dark and uncreated night were brought the splendour of the day and the magnificent canopy of stars. God has not yet done all; nor are we to be devoid of sense and motion. We are as seed sown in the earth. Time marks the events of our existence. Death plants us in Paradise. We are heirs of worlds glorious and eternal ! "Guess now, who holds thee? 'Death,' I said; but then Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese. RESEARCH XXXIII. TRANSITION FROM THE NATURAL BODY TO THE SPIRITUAL BODY. "Elements, the most seemingly unmanageable and discordant, are made to watch like ministering angels around us—each performing tranquilly its destined function, moving through all the varying phases of decomposition, decay, and death-then springing into new life, assuming new forms, resting in passive inactivity, or assuming the extreme of violence, as either may be suited to accomplish the appointed end."-FARADAY, Lectures on Non-Metallic Elements. "Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line Severing rightly God's from thine; RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Worship (adapted). WHEN the Prophet Samuel came out of the grave, he was invisible to Saul, but seen by the witch. Moses and Elias were seen and known, but the apostles were in a state of ecstasy. The bodies, we have reason to think, bore their former appearance, corresponding with their previous life. The bodies were not material, in the common sense; but possessed, as do the angels, power to pass from place to place, and make themselves visible. The resurrection-body of Jesus was of flesh and bones (Luke xxiv. 39), not the glorious body (John xx. 17). It had not so much a limiting, rather a concentrating force, that the personal form might go whither the indwelling will would have it (John xx. 19). The seen bodies of the saints were not those which are to be received at the resurrection. We gather from Isa. xiv. 9-17; Ezek. xxxi. 15-18; Rev. vi. 9–11; vii. 13-17, and other passages, that the bodily forms of departed souls are images of the inner man ; which had been fashioned for the soul, and worn by it, while dwelling in the mortal body; the product of the pneumatophysical nature, truly substantial forms, which will be made permanent for honour or dishonour, in the new worlds. This indicates in what manner we shall know and be known of one another; and with what sort of manly form we shall enter the Lord's presence (2 Cor. v. 2-4, 8). It is, doubtless, that which is beautified (Rev. vi. 11), which will be clothed upon with further glory (I Cor. xv. 51, 52). This answers to the question asked by Heinrich Heine for all. "One thing I'd know when we have perished, Where is the wind but now did blow?" Clarissa, Translated by Kate Freiligrath Kroeker. The character which evil men carry into the future is that figure of themselves whose beauty, the psalmist says (Ps. xlix. 14), is to be consumed; that fashioned self of selfishness which is capable of torment (Luke xvi. 22-24); that dishonourable thing which has made itself unfit for the upper worlds (Rev. xx. 14, 15). We do not imagine that the gross words Lord Byron somewhere has used are the exact truth "That fire unquench'd, unquenchable, Around, within, their heart shall dwell; |