traced on our conscience in writings of our spirit's sympathetic ink, is to be taken as a prophet's scroll, written within and without, concerning the burden of unrepented sins.

These fierce battles within our conscience, making cowards of us all, are to be compared with those seasons of peace when the Divine Presence makes our inmost soul His Mercy-Seat; telling of supreme power, endless growth, and a glory of Nature above nature. Our thoughts grow in strength; our ideas build themselves into substantial shapes; vividness of spiritual perception gives power of sight to the inner eye, and Heaven stands revealed. It is more glorious than a mighty city, with fabric of diamond, of gold, of transparent domes, and towers aglow with illumination of all gems. The worlds are as islands of splendour, the spaces between the worlds are for lesser spirits' occupation in preparation for universes of greater light. No emptiness anywhere, the presence of God everywhere. Dwelling in the true light, and life of the Eternal, we comprehend the nearest and the furthest in space and time. Filled with immortality, sustained by Him who dwelt in our flesh, our joy knows no limit, and the consciousness of life is immeasurable. We are inbreathed anew by the Creating Power; re-formed in the Divine Image; we see, we hear, we feel, we know, the Form who lighteneth infinity and eternity. This knowledge, this experience, is the best of all knowledge and experience; it is the grasp of all our faculties; the highest moral and mental proof to a man's own self; the revelation of God and Heaven. It is that for which we pray

"Come to our poor nature's night
With Thy blessed inward light,
Holy Ghost the Infinite,
Comforter Divine.

"Search for us the depths of God, Bear us up the starry road

To the height of Thine abode,

Comforter Divine."

George Rawson.

RESEARCH XII.

TRACES OF SPIRITUAL LAW IN THE NATURAL WORLD.

"I have seen men reject the Christian Faith, as an outworn fable, simply on the ground of the insoluble mysteries it contains; when they cannot take, and know that they cannot take, a single step on any path of inquiry without being confronted by the insoluble mysteries of Force, and Life, and Thought."-REV. SAMUEL COX, Genesis of Evil, serm. i.

"He only knoweth-only he is free from sin, and wise, Who seeth Me, Lord of the Worlds, with faith-enlightened eyes, Unborn, Undying, Unbegun."

EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., The Song Celestial,

Translated from the Sanskrit.

NATURE means those realms of matter and energy within many universes which, probably, exhibit matter and energy in the forms known by us. Nature is intersected in every part by powers innumerable. Gravity has its spheres-dominated, we think, from some one great centre. Life, its domains of myriad kindreds. Sensation, intelligence, emotion, extend beyond all known limitation. There is unity, as to the whole, and characteristic differences of the parts. The harmony established by science, is a special harmony within specific compartments; and a general harmony extends to the whole; so that many are the harmonies within one harmony. As man's powers overlap and overlap, indications are given that those we call universes are islands,

or groups of islands, within one infinitude, one eternity: the beginning before all time, the purport transcending time.

The Theology of Nature and of Revelation is the most splendid and stupendous of all human conceptions. It is not separate, but a part of the reasonable order of things; that order being viewed as a continuance of substance, and a transformation of energy. The ideal, universal, and final harmony of whatever is in time and space, most accords with the increasing reason of human nature, when we regard it as in agreement with the absolute, eternal Energy and Wisdom; who brought Himself, by means of creation, into relation with the finite. Every man of due capacity, from earliest time till now, says, "I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and to know the reason of things" (Eccles. vii. 25).

Traces of the intellectual and spiritual are not few and far between; but so prevalent in whatever is, and in our knowledge of it, as to be the basis of all that we know. It is a certainty than which nothing can be greater; for it is not possible to obtain a clearer demonstration than is afforded in our experience day by day. One not remarkable for faith has said, "It is almost universally allowed that the existence of matter or of spirit, of space or of time, is in its nature unsusceptible of being proved; and that if anything is known of them, it must be by immediate intuition."1 Lord Bacon, otherwise, but not less plainly, declares the same truth : "So has the world been set in the heart of man as declaring, not obscurely, that God framed his mind, as a 1 Mill's "System of Logic,” vol. i. p. 27.

glass, capable of the image of the universal world, joying to receive the signature thereof as the eye is of light." Dr. Whewell ("Plurality of Worlds," p. 334) stated, "No ordinary mind can refuse its conviction as to the wise adaptation and provident contrivance" to be found in nature. Indeed, Sir John Herschel described force as the effect of a consciousness or will existing somewhere" ("Astronomy," sect. 440).

By this knowing-Mill calls it "intuition," Bacon says it is "a setting of the world in the heart of man —we are aware of downward tendencies in all matters, social, civil, intellectual, religious; and of germs that tend to a new order of things. To this new order the world's destinies travel. Our skill, in exalting the sensations of the eye and ear beyond their natural range, is in accord with a corresponding mental elevation of rational hearing and sight. We avail ourselves of all natural things and make them a medium for the display of thought. We make wood and stone yield to the instrument; and ductile materials to plastic influence; as we put our ideas into force, and give them material form. Ideas are the legislating influence, our limbs are the executive faculty, and the things around our commonwealth. Due cultivation is laying the foundations of our reason low and deep, that a great and powerful structure may be raised-a common blessing, that the larger intellect may elevate those of lesser power. This renovation, through the medium of more accurate knowledge, through a closer and more real conjunction with the source of all knowledge, is happiness of highest condition.

"Every hour that fleets so slowly

Has its work to do or bear;