difference is made between Socrates and those who gave him poison. These excelling powers remind us of Him who most excels; whose sceptre was a reed; whose diadem was a crown of thorns; whose throne was the cross; by whom we are enabled to become the sons of God.

"I think if thou couldst see,

With thy dim mortal sight,
How meanings, dark to thee,

Are shadows hiding light;
Truth's efforts crossed and vexed,
Life's purpose all perplexed,—
If thou couldst see them right,

I think that they would seem all clear, and wise, and bright.”

Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics.

RESEARCH X.

NOTHING IS LOST.

"I am whatsoever is-whatsoever has been-whatsoever shall be: and the veil which is over my countenance no mortal hand has ever raised."A Sublime Thought: The Inscription that was upon the Temple of Isis, as to the Great Mother, Nature.

"The curtain was raised, for the darkness itself was meant to help in giving instruction."—Anon.

WHAT went before, and that which will follow, are not hidden by two unpierceable curtains of darkness: we know that what we have is the united product of all the past, that the joint produce of past and present will constitute the future; and, seeing the wonders already accomplished, the stupendous miracles of existence, motion, and law-abiding operations, we are sure that men who say, "There is no advance, there is no future worth the thinking of," are weaklings indeed— "Half a reproach to us, and half a jest."

"There is in Nature a permanent element, and also a changeable; the changes are always the result of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all."1 They manifest the great Reality, the Essence, the Power, by which Mill," Three Essays on Religion," p. 142.

1

things are and continue-the Infinite, the Eternal, the Unchangeable. Great truths and realities are most difficult of attainment. To say, "The future, a judgment to come, should be so clear as to need no argument, nor formulation in a creed," is the speech of a man who thinks that all the world is in his own nutshell. Wisdom is not common property.

The continuity of finite things is carried on, so far as we know, by changes. These changes are effected momentarily by the forces which round the suns and determine our own individuality. Not, necessarily, by retaining any particular particles of matter, or organic form; but by that energy which makes the old sun live on, not the same old sun, but renewed every moment, from the utmost limits of space; until, ceasing to act as sun, he is subject to new conditions.

There is a sequence of things, whose apparent uniformity enables scientific men to assert the reign of law. This reign and uniformity are not inconsistent with the most sudden and tremendous catastrophes. Slow process, and long continuance of outward sameness, may be quickly broken; and things not the same arise amidst seemingly identical circumstances; but, whether in continuance or change, no place and no condition is apart from law. There is little doubt but that other universes preceded our own, and that others will follow; but everywhere and always, everything was reasonable, no annihilation anywhere; conservation became transformation; and old things were renewed, by operation of one and the same eternal energy, to enter new shapes and occupy new places.

Nothing is lost. Nature would be lost, if left to

itself, by passing into universal equilibrium; but the permanent Energy which is in Nature, yet not of or by Nature, while ever transforming all things so that atoms. pass into molecules, and molecules into masses, masses into worlds, and worlds become scenes of life, of thought, of worship, uplifts man into a faith that lives and moves by grateful response to the ever-living Power. This most splendid process makes the elements of the dust in our streets to be at one with the basis of starry effulgence, to shine in the brilliant conceptions of human genius, and to take a power and crown of praise in those holy aspirations with which man rejoices in God. It is impossible that anything can be lost, seeing that such great strength is ordained out of weakness, and things are made of that which does not appear.

So well aware are we that nothing is lost in nature, nor anything unreasonable, that we take a word, or even part of a word, and build philological arguments to prove that ancient men knew of God, and worshipped. Geologists, not finding any one place where the strata are superimposed in the accepted scientific order, bring portions of rock from all places; and thus, by co-ordination of many disarrangements, arrive at the true mode and order of the various geological formations. Palæontologists, from an ancient bone, or the fragment of a bone, or the impression of a tooth, extract evidences which they use as links to weld the many lives of the earth into one vast chain, which the philosophic spirit binds to the footstool of Eternal Life and Power. So when " the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing," because they will have a higher use and a higher meaning; our highest faculties,

all of them collectively and every one singly, find comfort and assurance in the poet's words—

"I saw Eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright.

True light shows the way,

The way, which from this drear and dark abode,
Leads up to God.

"A way where you might tread the sun, and be

More bright than he."

Henry Vaughan.

We turn to very pleasing use the fact that nothing is lost, and that all change tends to conservation. The aspect of our friend's face when lit up with a bright thought, or aglow with noble emulation, is made to leave a permanent impression; and some special moment and look of life is made to live long after the outer form has passed away. By photographic art we take the negative likeness, and keep it in secret; no friend knows of it, no eye looks on it; but we keep it for years. Then we make the negative positive, and the look that a man looked long ago, reflecting a thought that the brain thinks not now, is seen; the look and thought speak to us, though he who looked and thought has passed away.

"Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,

As more of Heaven in each we see;
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care."

Christian Year: Morning Hymn.

The process of likeness-taking may, by a sort of intension and extension, develop an inward clearness and