into contact with a corporeal state is not a degradation; and doubtless reveals a new sphere and mysterious power of influence, various sentiments and modes of action, that would otherwise be wholly foreign to incorporeal existence. This means of quickening peculiar knowledge and varied action, bringing imaginative sentiments into alliance with animal sensations, their intermixture with ideas of beauty and order, not only form part of our own training and transformation, but may have formed part of that discipline under which some angels fell, and by means of which some were exalted. We are not to apply this to those superior intelligences as if they, by any incorporation with gross matter, could attain a higher nature; but, without discussing the nature of their "spiritual body," or contemplating the possibility of spirits having come from a pre-existent state into the new order of things on earth; it is not inconceivable that even archangels round the throne. of God may be connected with the energy, motion, heat, and light of the universe, providential arrangements and occurrences (Ps. civ. 4; Heb. i. 7). The material universe may be the clock by which spirits become conscious of the lapse of duration; while the creative, sustentative, renewing processes, make known other depths of the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 9–11).

Great minds, discoverers of universal laws-Copernicus, who marked out the true path of our sun and earth amongst celestial worlds; Kepler, who defined the curve described by the planets around their central luminary; Newton, who was able to fix the condition, unique and supreme, whence results. the equilibrium of worlds-did not study the universe as subject in all its movements to blind necessity, as were there no law, nor wisdom, nor beauty, nor harmony. Their investigation was a search for simplicity with comprehensiveness; and when the discovery of admirable symmetry and universal harmony established the all-pervading sway of power and wisdom, they bowed before the eternal throne, and worshipped Him who sat thereon.

Their knowledge is now our own, and illumines the way to Him by whom our imperfections are to have remedy, our spiritual hopes to be satisfied, our yearnings after immortality

Beneficent Guidance.

113

"I

realised. What saith one of our students of science? protest that, if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I would instantly close with the offer." 1 This he says, unaware that the thing is done for the willing, not by degradation but by re-creation (1 Cor. i. 30).

If exact science and advanced modern philosophy cause a man to wish he were "a sort of clock," and made, even against his will, to "think what is true and do what is right," what a proof this is of Scripture-that we have all gone astray! "Quid prodest omnes rerum cognoscere causas, si fugienda fugis, vel fugienda facis?" How small, as to real value, are secular science and philosophy in comparison with the truth and moral power possessed by the real Christian who knows that his sins are forgiven, that he receives grace to resist temptation, that he is being disciplined by the Spirit of God!

...

"These are truths that wake

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor man, nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy."

William Wordsworth.

That we are under the guidance of a Wise and Beneficent Power may be clearly shown. There is an orderly operation in the universe which produces definite sequences and results. The law of the origin and progress of many and enormously extended series of natural phenomena has been attained with such accuracy and thoroughness, that we can prophecy their course with the greatest certainty. By that one simple law of gravitation, regulating the movements of the heavenly bodies, we determine and predict to a fraction of a minute, for past and future years, the motions of bodies distant and complex as the double, triple, multiple stars. Knowledge extends our view to regions whence light, the quickest of all messengers, needs many years to reach the eye. We subject 1 "On Descartes' Discourse: " Prof. Huxley.

I

to our will the powers of a world greatly unfamiliar, partly hostile, and have their use for our reward. That which we grasp, or see, or hear, every thought or emotion of mind or heart, makes us conscious of things and processes of operation which our intellect, if sufficiently expanded, would be able to follow from beginning to end. The array of the external world, our own natural powers, all thought and emotion, or whatever goes to produce consciousness, those sacred longings for pure and endless life, the mysterious force of conscience, proclaim the great fact that the ponderous and wonderful mechanism of the world is the product of some great Governing Mind.

A leader in science, deservedly a leader in physics, has given his own revelation of world-government.1 The figure is startling and daring-"The chess-board is the world, the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The Player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair and just and patient. But we know to our cost that He never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man that plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse." Shrinking from his own words, the professor says-They are like a picture of Satan playing chess for the soul of a man, and "would substitute for that mocking fiend a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win." Afterwards, forsaking the angel, he says of our life's training—“It is a rough kind of education, one in which ignorance is treated like disobedience, incapacity is punished as a crime; it is not a word and a blow, but the blow first without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed."

In a sense, all is true. If we break Nature's laws we must pay Nature's penalties. We have heard such wisdom from men ere this. Wisdom must be far purer and more spiritual if it is to strengthen and comfort us. Why not say "Nature is by the will of God; he who breaks Nature's laws breaks

1 "Liberal Education:" Prof. Huxley.

God's law for the uses and wants of our earthly being?" Clever words, well said, have salt in their wit—are pleasant and preservative, we like to hear them; but jesting speeches do not take away from upright minds that distressing uneasiness which is their present greatest trial concerning the moral system of the universe.

All reasonable beings would gladly believe that there is a God, all-wise, almighty, all-perfect; but the existence of evil causes doubt and perplexity. In vain we try to stifle the doubt evil, misery, ruin in this world and the next; the trials of saints and the anguish of martyrs; great men, good men, gifted men in sorrow; render the world a waste, and our path through it, not a way of peace, but a dark road amidst mountains of despair. Are beings called into existence, and irrevocably destined to endless unmitigated torture? Are we to charge God with such acts of injustice and cruelty as render all the atrocity of men and excesses of the devil but exhibitions of comparative purity? The doctrines of Creation and Divine Rule render the fact more distressing, for they teach that every organism forms part of a grand universal teleology.

Having honestly exposed the difficulty, we candidly admit that, like many other mysteries of the universe, it is inexplicable by humble intelligence; but it is possible to give reasons for the existence of evil which, if they cannot remove the whole difficulty, enable us to believe that what is unexplained will hereafter afford wonderful views of the power and love of God. In the Study on the Pre-Adamite World the moral aspect is viewed; now take chiefly the physical.

Evil, as a fact, does not belong simply to theology. Atheism, in trying to get rid of it by a shift to chance or to fate, ascribing both good and evil to unintelligent causes, neither accounts for the vast preponderance of good nor alleviates the evil. That a mixed state of things is temporally necessitated by the physical constitution of the universe is certain. The earth has ever been a scene of warfare. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, present elaborate weapons of destruction. Throughout all time, there has been a perpetual preying of the superior on

the inferior a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong; and animals were so framed as to render bloodshed necessary. In innumerable cases the suffering inflicted seems to bring no compensating benefit; the low and repulsive destroy the attractive and noble; and there are elaborate appliances for securing the welfare of organisms, incapable even of feeling, at the price of misery to organisms susceptible of high happiness. Of the animal kingdom, half are parasites. Every known animal has its own species, and generally more than one. The Bothriocephalus latus and the Tania solium, two kinds of tapeworm which flourish in the human intestines, cause much distress, sometimes ending in insanity. From the germs of the Tania, carried into other parts of the body, arise partially developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinocci, and Cœnuri, which cause pain and disease in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, and other parts, often producing death. Five other parasites of a different class are found in the human viscera. Another class of Entozoa, of the subdivision Trematoda, exists of five kinds, attacking the liver, the gall-ducts, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. The Trichina spiralis in one phase of existence is embedded in the muscles, and thence passes into the intestines. As to the external parasites, or Epizoa, there are creatures that bury themselves in the skin, and there lay eggs; others infest the surface of the body. Man, animal, plant, are infested; and the two former endure suffering even unto death. Pain and sorrow are not partial nor accidental, but wide-spreading as life, and wrought into the very nature of things.

Is it possible to extract good out of this evil? Try. In the lowest grades of existence are creatures wholly inert ; their life is diffused, without central being, and may be called external; yet, even in these, is a conflict of forces. Amongst them are living things with life and motion clearly manifest. Higher in the scale are organisms with members of great variety and complexity, every one fitted to function; but life and activity are not at their best until some obstacle has to be surmounted, some difficulty to be overcome. Then action and reaction, the taking this, refusing that, the operation of will, come in. We conclude from the whole, that obstacles,