Our research adequately shows that every science tends to a greater future; that all facts, when co-ordinated by a principle, lead to larger uses; that even our modes of acquiring science confer increasing powers; that experience is always the basis of a larger knowledge that all the known witnesses of a greater unknown; and that sciences are so progressing that our present state is proved to be rudimentary; even as myths, fables, and day-dreams, indicate an unknown vastness not yet possessed. It is the glory of the earth that we, who are formed to dwell on it, rise greatly above it; of the air, that we, breathing it, living by it, do, by that life, breathe in spirit a heavenly atmosphere; of the sun, that we, seeing by its light, discern a better light in our souls; of the ground, that we consciously walk on it as sons of God; of the sea, that our image, reflected in it, is a likeness of the Almighty; of the elements as they nourish us, of the waters as they refresh us, of our flesh and blood curiously prepared for in the lower parts of the earth, that they enable us, with sensations, emotions, responsibilities, powers, to surpass them, go beyond them, transcend all time, pierce all space. Why, the very film of a bubble, blown from the lips of a playful child, has on its little circle a concentration of celestial beauties. Our life is such a vapour, but these thoughts, these emotions of ours, are rudimentary of powers not yet possessed; potentialities and preparations for a state that is to come; sure symbols, unerring proofs, of a coming life, fuller, richer, greater, more glorious! (9) 66 RESEARCH II. GERMS OF THOUGHT FOR THINKERS. 'Thinking, when analyzed, is found to consist in bringing all that happens under universal laws, and no phenomenon can be said to be explained in thought except by being so related to all other phenomena.”— FREDERICK TEMPLE (Lord Bishop of London), The Relations between Religion and Science, chap. i. "Life is only bright when it proceedeth Towards a truer deeper Life above; ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER Incompleteness. HUMAN speech is of threefold application: to the past, as in history; to the present, as dealing with its manifold concernments; to the future, as revelatory or prophetic of that which is to come.1 "As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image Wallenstein, Part II. act v. sc. 1. 1 “Indeed, I find no people nor nation civilized and cultivated, or wild and barbarous, but think that there are foregoing signs of future events, and men capable of understanding and predicting them." "Gentem quidem multam video neque tam humanum atque doctam, neque tam immanem tamque barbaram, quæ non significari futura, et à quibusdam intelligi prædicique posse censent."—Cicero. Highest thought apprehends universal truth. Speech, in expressing that truth, is of infinite expansion. The speech of intelligent creatures, in any one world, is but a dialect of the universal language in which the Eternal allows His creatures to commune one with another, and with Himself. The life, thought, behaviour, of any one creature, is but as the signification of a word in that dialect. Language is of great advantage in preserving us from false conclusions and vain speculations. We may dream of demonstrations, cut out an illusory world of such "mathematical dreamland" that there shall be nothing but what is not. The attempt to define our thought in speech awakes common sense to be a guide. Speech, or expression of thought, not necessarily vocal, is always symbolical, as representative of something else. The universe is of all symbols the grandest. So widespread is symbolism, that only by celestial observations can large terrestrial charts be made scientifically. Whether in its widest expansion within space, or in the opening of its minutest material part, it is a visible figure of that invisible determining force of the Eternal Energy, by which matter and motion have their state and work in time and space. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge;" and every star is a shining letter displaying worlds of meaning and life in Creation's Book. The greatest men are those who discern and effectively use the times, means, and opportunities which their place in life affords. Their genius, or whatever it is, hears a voice, “This is the way, walk ye in it; and, obeying, they are as masters, the makers rather than the made of circumstances, turning even evil to good, as by an immortal principle outliving the evil. A boy, only a shepherd, shall so observe the stars as to become a great astronomer. A man, but a monk, so reads Scripture and with such application to his time, that popes observe him, and princes are instructed. If we think of Homer, of Socrates, of Milton, of Shakespeare, of Robert Burns the ploughman, of great warriors who made or marred many nations, we find that, like great trees, they had giant roots. In other ways they are unlike trees; for trees, having borne leaves, flowers, fruit, have nothing more to do; but men have further capacities, of which they feel that those used now are only the beginnings. They do not find anywhere insurmountable prison walls. Their mind, going forward, learns more and more, passes bound after bound, and has proof in itself that boundlessness is that for which it is made, and that unto which it will attain, for it is in affinity with the exhaustless Intelligence which thus marks their destination. History would be an inexplicable mystery unless we learned that the great men of it did so read the signs of the time, so understand the hieroglyphics of their own life and powers and circumstances, as to bring out a meaning and purpose which other men saw not, or, seeing, did not use. They had visions, were the creators and feeders in the world, of ardent zeal and far-reaching hope. All of them had some conception, however vague, of a life beyond the present. Sometimes it did but arouse their terror; and, with wide-open eyes, they looked on darkness of awful meaning. Another sort of interpretation comes by men of science. By rigorous methods of thought, and exact experiment, they not only give an intelligible meaning to the arrangements and movements of the stars; but prove that all our knowledge as to fitness, purpose, reasonableness, is obtained by practical acquaintance with the skill and power and far-reaching concords which are displayed in the worlds. All things, from the grass on the house-top to the giant tree of the forest, from the bird building in its height to the elephant browsing at its root, are subject to universal laws, by which everything belongs to the whole; yet interprets the whole to its own special use; exhibiting, everywhere, an adequate intervention of fit agency; by which the welfare of the creature is made that into which all lines of the universe converge. Operations, which reveal intelligence, are traced in unintelligent creatures; and everywhere are signs of a mental vastness of which our own reason is a miniature; the great meanings being shadowed in our little meanings, as the dew-drop represents the sky. Not only in the stars, but quietly amongst the elements of the earth, in the trees and plants, not less in our poor streets than in costly palaces, are those entities, not thrown about at random, which bind our life, our every thought and emotion, into that universal purpose of majesty, of glory, of duration, of splendour, which has the signature of God. Men who deny that there is or ever was any supernatural revelation, can only account for a prevalent belief in God and the Future, by showing that the marvellous construction of the world awoke the thought of Divinity; and the fact that all things exist chiefly for the future aroused faith in a world to come. Not to acknowledge this Divine signature is to magnify the little at the expense of the great. Even |