"the great waters where the world's knowledge passes to and fro;" nor taking into the sanctuary of our mind the blessed intelligence and hopes which come as messengers from the Eternal. Men who can hardly measure the outside of anything, are naturally hard to persuade into our reasons for belief; cannot see the visions we point to, nor the glories we behold. They have to learn that the evidences and the facts of our science concerning new creations grow as the world grows; that when outward events are explained by their inward meaning, the remote stirrings are discerned; and the future, as a written book, opens to thought—not always a fulfilment of firmest, but always a fulfilment of wisest faith. Those who, in times past, silenced our beliefs with a rotelearned science, saying, "Our alphabet covers all;" because, as a general certainty, "an insect will not walk with his head hindmost;" are beginning to be conscious that their knowledge does not spell the full meaning of anything. We Christians, for our part, have not been dedicated "to unpath'd waters," or to "undream'd shores;" our thoughts of the future, like memories of what has been, are a beautiful witness of things not yet in sight. We know that the dust of the sky now being fashioned into new worlds and the life now struggling on earth are blending into one expression of praise to Divine Might, Wisdom, Love, as a "Gloria in excelsis." Tendency to the future is not a mere continuance of things, not a sort of overbalance to wear and waste; but an organic process by which, when the new is old, the old grows new. The fact that nothing is lost, that the diffusion of energy is certainly ministrant to far-off processes, ought to persuade every scientific mind that there is universal teleology leading to the display of some glorious result; of which every renewal of brightness, every restoration of power, is a hint and prevision. The best men have no fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity; nor is it phantasy when they 66 Essay to draw from all created things Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings; And trace in leaves and flowers that round them lie Samuel Taylor Coleridge, To Nature. There has been a song of mourning through the ages, yet the evil was borne-the fears of death being greater than the troubles of life, and men, who would not worship God, lighted a candle to serve the Devil. Their unbelief and ignorance did all the mischief. Knowledge comes slowly, is worshipful, clear-eyed, very modest. Ignorance is very hardy, specially in two sorts of people—the brutal and the falsely scientific, who would give "a flavour to their roast with the burnt souls of many generations." Ignorance counts the whole of skill a secular use of six days' work; makes a sport of endeavouring to pull down the pillars of Divine faith, and unmindful of the unmapped country within us, discerns not the signs of future existence. This falsity of conceit, this blindness, is giving way to a sense of some mastering influence. The spirit, by the infiltrating power of religious teaching, by the concentration of scientific light, is more conscious of a sublime, an awful principle, that builds the soul for a mighty destiny and the world for a wonderful future. The infinite possibilities, the capacity for joy and grief, the illumination of faculties which day by day grow in splendour, are known to be reflections of realities greatly more wonderful. The atom, an infinitesimal concrete of the material universe, has its spiritual similitude in the soul, an intellectual counterpart, or symbol, of the Spirit that rules the universe. The progress, the capacity for a future, in the soul of man, is a shadow of the greater reality-the new creation and continuance of worlds in space. There are two modes of progress as to life and worlds: one, by which initial life progresses to completion, and rudimentary worlds are made splendid habitations; the other, that which takes away old life, and replaces it by new, which dissipates waning worlds, to be fresh material for new stars. We have not the least doubt but that infinitude is the fruitful womb of these two processes; and that thence were brought all things that now are; and thence will be whatever is to come. We have undeniable proof that the Power, which all phenomena represent, is not a chaotic, but cosmic influence; consequently, taking away is not destructive, but for the purpose of greater fulness. Were the Power chaotic, all worlds would certainly have perished during an infinite past. Not only so: energy, tending to chaos or confusion, could not have given mathematical order to the skies; but this order having been given; and space bearing, in comparison with visible worlds, the proportion of infinitude to finitude; present order demonstrates, as interpreted by science, that creation obtains glorious victories, and is tending to wonderful replenish ment. Science is in the way to apprehend the physical order or progress by which a cloud became a con stellation; and of tabulating the biological order of living things on the earth. Both processes, we have reason to think, are going on elsewhere; the planets of our own system, and the suns of other centres, are passing into new stages; there is in operation at the present moment a fashioning of new worlds. These worlds and things come into being by means similar to those which produced the past and continue the present. Nature is one grand unity; diversity is nothing more than the various handlings of the finite by the Infinite ; good things of the past pass on in perpetual benediction. Some processes have been accelerated in nature, and others retarded; some intensified, and others diminished; the general uniformity is connected with great catastrophes : so will it be in the future. Suns break out in sudden brilliancy, then darkness covers them; others are of intermittent brightness. The changes are great as those that will in the future happen to our own system, and to other near worlds; and the restitution, or restoration, of all things is, on a large scale, the completion of those partial renewals which are now at work in our own sun and many distant stars. This perfecting process explains the existence of pain, and apparent failure. "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" Robert Browning. It exhibits pain as a penalty for infraction of order, and as a means of helpful restoration—a necessary element in education. We need not make a puzzle of the fact, "Knowledge entereth by suffering, and life is perfected by death." Every conscious finite thing is hemmed in with restrictions, and there is a right and a wrong way of passing the bounds. We do well, sometimes, to leave the physical for those greater researches which belong rather to heart-knowledge than logical disputation. The outward, the visible creation, is the vessel, the vehicle, the clothing of internal realities. The court of the temple-and we are now proselytes of the gate, initiates of the porch only-is an introduction to the real things and diviner presences. In a while we shall enter the full meaning of things, and read the life of God written in those letters of gold, the cherubim and seraphim, the suns and stars. As God writes His life, we too, as faint images of Him, make our biography. We are conscious that there is a sort of baptism and consecration in life that will, if we are true, bind us to that rectitude and purity against which sins are a sacrilege, and "tear down the invisible altar of trust." If, with degraded will, no sense of emulation as to our future selves, and with foolish consent, we give ourselves to weak misdoing and shabby achievement; no wonder that our thoughts take the aspect of illusion, and faith is counted an error. Some of us go so far as to think God has done and given nothing because the worlds are not finished, and His whole estate not made over to us. Our duty is to rise above the shallow tide in which such abortive lives chafe; to make the most of our surroundings; to obtain a full nature; to take part in that growing good which is achieved by men of a faithful but often hidden life; whose genius, by the art and piety of good living, turns all evil things to good; |