The closer our intellectual contact with religious truths, the securer grows our knowledge. People, who know least of it, talk most against religious evidence. “No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well;" yet, men whose skill is to scan verses, or to investigate the potato blight, speak as were they present at the post-mortem examination of our Christian Faith. They know nothing of nature's rare conjunctions amidst circumstances apparently unfavourable; nor how souls not only live. on, but thrive, and are rich with originating activity and fine expression, having clear insight of future things at work within. Why, if there were a post-mortem examination, these men would be as old women at it. Only those who consciously build up themselves in the world of spiritual facts, by customary contact with the invisible powers; who, assimilating the eternal spiritual elements, know themselves to possess eternal life by the Grace of God in Christ. None but these exercise that true power of scientific imagination, the genius of all science, which discerns the marvels of the inner man, and claims alliance, union, communion, with the Living God. Lord, Thy hand leads us; Thy right hand guides us. Not only in Scripture, do we find Thee; not only at the close of our pilgrimage, do we turn to Thee; but from the lowest and highest levels of our reason, in the things far off and nigh of creation we uplift ourselves and move forward. Ripen our faith into the full light and possession of Thy Glory. We are sure that Thou wilt never leave us, O Lord God of our salvation. RESEARCH XXVI. PROPHETIC POWER AS SUGGESTIVE OF IMMORTALITY. 1 "Thought 'Tis thine on eagles' wings to soar, Unknown, unfathomed realms explore; Below the deeps, above the sky, Beyond the starry orbs on high; (Can aught restrain thy flight?) To pierce the realm of future time, To realms of light?" FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, Thought. EVEN very clever men have habitually thought, "The light of Nature affords us not a single argument for a future state this is the only one-that it is possible with God, since He who made us out of nothing can surely recreate us; and that He will do this we humbly hope." Now, seeing that everything tends to the future, that nothing perishes, or is even completed in any present time, so that, on the small scale, a future is always certified; and that, when we contemplate things on a large scale, "progress, not periodicity, appears to be the order of things; common sense assures us that; 1 Erasmus Darwin, quoted in "Life of Charles Darwin," p. 13, by G. T. Bettany. "2 2 Professor G. G. Stokes, F. R. S., "Light as a Means of Investigation," p. 105. instead of Nature not affording a single argument for a future state; the whole of nature, in its every part, is an actual proof of a future state; for not one particle of it, not one force of it, but is made for the future. The fact, as to all things being for the future, comes out clearly in science. The general result of every kind of research indicates a similarity of plan throughout all known space and worlds, combined with individual differences, which demonstrates that every process is preparatory of another; and when we consider the structure of our own bodies, and the wonderful adaptations of the various organs to their purposes, we discern that the vastness of the universe has not made the Creator unmindful of us His creatures. One of our late masters in science forcibly stated the truth: "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed with everincreasing force that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly acquired through each part occasionally varying in a slight degree . . . transcend in an incomparable manner the contrivances and adaptations which the most fertile imagination of man could invent.” 1 It is interesting to consider how mechanical and organic processes prepare for a state not yet come. We are thus enabled to know somewhat of the way by which living things in the water went forth to possess the earth and the air. We also learn that a being of sufficient intelligence could have foreseen the things of the present time. Of late years the mechanism of respiration in the turtle has been very carefully observed. In 1878 it was noticed, of a turtle confined in a glass aquarium, that the throat and floor of the mouth be 1 Charles Darwin, F.R.S., "Fertilization of Orchids." came alternately swollen and collapsed while the turtle was immersed in water. To ascertain the meaning of this, the bottom of the aquarium was covered with fine sand. Then it was seen that the sand was swept aside as by a stream, in front of the animal's head, when the mouth of the turtle opened and its throat dilated. It was thus made evident, that with the organs for aquatic respiration were combined those of an aerial respiration.1 Passing from material construction to moral government, we find that continuity and universality of law, strictly applied to every part of the world and true of the whole, is infallible as to the certainty that neither goodness nor badness, neither thought nor act, neither life nor death, has wrought all, or received all, in any present circumstances, of which it is capable. This universality of the future for all things, renders it highly probable that men have power, according to their degree of intelligence and responsibility, to know of and to influence that future. This potentiality, in the present, of the future, is not a theologian's notion; it has become almost an axiom in science. Mr. Charles Darwin thus wrote: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." 2 1 Simon H. Gaye, "Paper on Pharyngeal Respiration in the SoftShelled Turtle," quoted in "Mammalian Descent," p. 56, by W. Kitchen Parker, F.R.S. 2 Concluding sentence of "The Origin of Species." If the forces ruling matter are, though continuous, purely mechanical; any creature possessing intelligence so as to forecast the direction and result of those forces; possesses, in that foreseeing, somewhat that is analogous, therefore continuous. Whither the thought can fly, and whither emotion can proceed, thither may go the power represented by them; even as does the power of which mechanical processes are the exhibition, It is no reply to say "I see and foresee that the wind, continuing in such a point, will arrive at America whither I shall never go:" for, in fact, the mind does go thither in the sense that it anticipates things, or time, or place, by mentally and emotionally thrusting itself forward with some degree of realization. If we had no such power of making the future real, at least in our own mind, we should be able to think without any foundation for thought, and apart from definite aim or purpose; but that is absurd. If the forces ruling matter are manifestations of an eternal Power, by whom are all things; the universal tendency in them to new futures is from that Power, and so is the faculty by which the progress is discerned. This faculty, or reason, being like that whence it comes; is able to foresee, to control, to possess by anticipation. We know that the sun and moon will be eclipsed at certain times; that the seasons follow in their order; and we shall, when our science is sufficiently advanced, owing to the universality of law, calculate opposing forces, variety of positions, varying velocities of motion, so accurately as to predict the result, in time and space, of the vastest and most complex processes. It is an advantage to our argument concerning |