Memorial of the Supreme. 165 we refuse to allow that the Eternal Power, of whom the web of phenomena is a visible garment, is to be degraded into a necessary order, or fate, or a physical property, or mere strand in the web of phenomena. He is the Infinite and Inscrutable God; not an intelligence circumscribed, adapting its own internal processes to other processes going on externally; but a Spirit to whom we as correctly attribute the wisdom as we do the energy displayed in the universe. The arguments generally used to divest the Infinite and Eternal of wisdom and will, do, when applied in a like manner, unclothe all human conduct from volition and intelligence. For example, take the President of the British Association, assembled at Belfast in the year 1874, as a reasonable being. Why? For no other reason, though some doubt, than that he behaved as if he were reasonable. The president of 1874 used the playful illustration in reference to the president of 1870. Even suppose, taking his address, we cannot go further than the as if, still, there is no other known method of accounting for his conduct than by saying, he had some portion of intelligence. "Hold thou the good, define it well, For fear divine philosophy In Memoriam. If a man is insensible to the mystery of the universe; if the soul is that of an animal-unvisited by gleams of any brighter life, dead to the stirring sacred impulses of piety-how can we make him feel that of which his nature is incapable? Happily, no such man exists; and only men of souls most shrivelled, with narrow vision of life's realities and the world's vastness, can entertain the notion that our human organism is limited to the material mechanism. Encompassed by mysteries, subjected to influences of awe, tenderness, sympathy, which no words can express, no theories fully explain, with moral and æsthetic instincts, inclining us to the good, the pure, the beautiful; visited with convictions that there is a larger life than the visible firmament contains; and all these physically exhibiting themselves in actions and reactions. of the organism, we are compelled to regard them as memorials of the Supreme, and tokens that we are centres to which the intelligible universe converges, and from which it radiates. As we advance in science, the world enlarges with our knowledge; shall we, instead of growing with the world, allow an atheistic system to separate us from the universal existence by a quibbling statement-" There is no bridge," and thus lose our good portion in that glorious world which is deeper and higher than all phenomena? Are we to stop as men already at the finality of existence, though always having fresh experiences? Were it not better to hope that we shall, ere long, possess the keys which unlock mysteries, and reveal what is and will be? If a man say-"We have no organs for apprehension of the Supernatural," must we think that the Supernatural is incapable of manifesting Himself within us; and if we cannot think of an effect without a cause, or of creation without a creator, is not that a manifestation? If we cannot obtain from matter anything that was not contained in the original atom, though Godhead is revealed in a world of beauty, do we not rightly regard our intellectual and moral nature, those germs of goodness which enabled prophets and apostles to become so great, as revelations of the supernatural, a kind of bridge, so that we have experiences of Divinity, in the faithful use of which holy men do, indeed, as by a change of position, bring into view and within the circle of spiritual knowledge that which before was unknown? STUDY X. DAY III. THE HABITATION OF LIFE. "Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer, Before all temples, the upright heart and pure, Paradise Lost. By sacred geology we understand that the formation of the earth was by the Almighty. He did not labour as an artificer who shapes every work by handicraft. We do not conceive that every species of rhinoceros, and every species of hyæna, or the long succession of forms from earliest to present time, was separately constructed out of the dust. Nor did God create by intellectual or physical exercise, such as we are capable of, but by means of incomprehensible operations, now defined as natural order or law, He furnished space as the star-domed city of the great King; and now, through every star, through every grass-blade, but most through every living soul, beams the glory of an ever-present God. Natural law being the formula of Divine action, and all dynamic phenomena the multiform revelation of the Omniscient and Omnipresent. By various orders of experience we may imagine humanwise the creative process. The passage of invisibles into visibles, as gas into light; the coming of the unseen vapour of water or steam, into the seen; are one step. We may think of germs growing into animals; or plants, great or small, developing in such minute progression that at no moment can it be said, "now the seed ceases, now the tree exists." We then observe that the births of various plants and animals, separated by wide intervals of time, are analogous to epochs in the formation of stars and planets; as the earth may so change in the course of hundreds of thousands of years that none of the present forms of life exist; so in other starry worlds have been, are, and will be lifeless ages, living durations, and death periods. Within our intellectual conceptions we may hasten or retard the operation; and obtain as clear a view of creation as we can of evolution, indeed evolution rightly understood, is creation; showing the vast reach of organic phenomena, and rendering them intelligible. We may reverently regard the production now, of every child, and flower, and tree as a special creation: for the perpetual origination of countless individuals throughout the world, from hour to hour, is to the devout mind, the more miraculous because so ordinary. Thought may take another turn: a straight line and a circle are not much alike-let the straight line be continued as a figure of infinity, and the circle be conceived vast as the universe. The one encloses a space; the other, continued for ever, will not enclose a space. The one is limited, the other may be unlimited; but if the straight line be bent so slightly that no eye-no, not even aided by a rule-can appreciate it, you may get an immensely elongated form; and, if you go on, may acquire the peculiar properties and special equations of the hyperbola, parabola, ellipse, and circle. The first and last, being quite opposite, are nevertheless made members of a series which you produce by insensible modifications. Such a mode of representation has been used to figure evolution; it may well and fairly be used as a symbol of that line and universe which He stretched and fashioned who went forth, by His will and power, to make all things in continuance. In continuance, for no one supposes that the oak, ready formed within the acorn, lies there in miniature. The oak is quite as much in the earth and air, not really in either, but formed from all. In like manner, when the eye was created, the means may have been the action of light on a suitable sensitive surface; then this Scientific Geology. 169 eye being brought into due relation with external objects, there would be visual perception. We may also picture to ourselves the forms of sense and the forms of thought, being created and developed in us, as are the branches and foliage of the oak evolved from the acorn. It matters little what name we give to the process; the great desire of our age is for a doctrine which shall arrange our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that right conduct shall be the result of true faith. Scientific geology treats of what materials the earth is composed, and in what manner they are arranged. It reveals that the earth, some long time ago, was in a viscous or even perfectly liquid state. Cooling rapidly at the surface, the crust became denser than the liquid below; and, when broken by pressure from within, portions sank down, and solidification began on the newly exposed liquid surface. At depths of five hundred miles under the surface, there may be portions of the originally liquid mass at temperatures equivalent to red, or even white heat, but solid, as Sir William Thomson has shown by means of precession, and by other astronomical determinations: the whole mass of the earth being virtually solid, more rigid than if it were glass throughout, nearly as rigid as a solid mass of steel. Scientific geology, not limited to the mineral kingdom, nor to the various rocks and soils, relates the history of animals and plants: in fact, all the changes which have taken place in the former state of the earth's surface and interior, are investigated. Science, thus ascertaining the manner and means by which the works of nature are wrought, is priestess of the physical universe, is a great benefactress, and we reverently receive her instructions. She describes and fairly well maps out the nearer portion of the pathway our earth has travelled; its varied period of existence as a revolving globe, the production of rocks, the gathering of seas, the depths out of which dry land was raised, and the emptiness of land and sea until both became many chambered habitations of life. It is proved that man had a beginning, that the animals had a beginning, and that the earth's surface was re-arranged again and again. Mountains were formed, raised, worn down, or |