our spirit is an infinite life. Divinity animates it, inspires it, moves its activities. It will have manifestation and embodiment suitable for the eternal harmony which we forecast and long for, the sweetness and rest of the blessed life that is to be.1 Then, "Make use of me, my God! Let me not be forgot; A broken vessel cast aside, One whom Thou needest not; 1 "It was always capable of proof by metaphysical analysis, that matter is only explicable as a function of force, and force only explicable as a function of conscious Mind and Will; and the prominence given by modern science to dynamical views of the physical world has made such conceptions as these much more obvious, and much more impressive than they were formerly."-Joseph John Morley, "Scientific Bases of Faith," Introd., PP. 13, 14. 66 RESEARCH XXXVII. REMOTE REVOLUTIONS IN TIME. I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host.”— Ezek. i. 24. "Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks.' LORD TENNYSON, In Memoriam, lxxxii. WHAT we know certainly, otherwise nothing is known, is the existence of a material universe, partially occupied by various forms of animal and other life, amidst innumerable unfelt and invisible substances and forces. The science which confirms this, affirms that worlds preceded the present, and worlds will exist when those now known have passed away. "Within the hollow silence of the night Nor these alone. . . From singing constellations, humming thought, And Life, through Time's stops, blowing variously.” Alfred Austin, A Sleepless Night. The material universe is a work which is being consummated in perfect goodness, by the Almighty, the Infinite, the Omniscient, the Eternal. For us to think U otherwise—either that we do not and cannot know what God purposes; or that there is no purpose, no guidance anywhere would set at naught our common sense, and prove our every act to be foolish; for, as rational creatures, we must think and behave as if everything tended to some thing, or things, in particular. "Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide Wm. Wordsworth, Excursion, bk. iv. Possibly, nay probably, all existing forms of matter are reducible to that hypothetical universal medium, or ether, which pervades. all space and all substances. All forces may be classified as different manifestations of energy from one Power. We know that every visible shape, or form of things, is the product of force. That which aggregates invisible particles so that they become visible substance, is force; that which manifests life in dead matter is force; all chemical and organic processes are due to force; that by which we think and act, is force. The whole visible world is due to force. To carry on the present universe, that it may change little by little, that every particle of matter may be always borne into new parts of space, always acted upon by forces travelling along new lines of direction, seems the purpose of all existing arrangements. There is no destruction anywhere; apparent sameness is the theatre of ceaseless variety; and all taking away is for reappearance elsewhere in new forms and conditions. Past modifications have not been always slow, and in the future may be great catastrophies. Some buds blossom and fruit quickly; some animals rapidly attain perfection; doubtless some worlds, some purposes, ripen fast. To make the universe what it is occupied all past time, to translate that which is into completest state all future time will be used. Whatever the process, it is not an undoing, as of something done amiss; nor a tinkering, as of somewhat botched; but an advance by which everything, as of itself, harmonizes with and advances the whole. The work is not that of a machine, in which every part blindly obeys; but that effected by a Spirit of Intelligence. So grand a universe of wisdom, power, life, beneficence; a sphere in which whatever is shall perfectly accord with the surroundings; is that toward which our hopes, our efforts, our science, all point. We believe that all suffering will be made up to the sufferer, all wrong made right; we shall know the truth, and the truth will make us free. "All things come round to him who will but wait." These sciences showing far-off ends and remote revolutions in time, as tending to new heavens and a new earth, are sufficiently accurate; for when we apply the intelligence, that warrants them, to examine things near at hand-say to the fumes escaping from some of our factories—we find a means of making gold of that which ran to waste. Then exercising ourselves on the more distant, many of those formerly considered outlying galaxies of worlds, are found to be within our own system of things. The streams of the Milky Way are as the branches of a tree; and the nebulæ, the twig-work and the leaves. The two Magellanic Clouds appear like masses floated off from the Milky Way. There are more than five thousand of these starry systems; many of them belong to the wealth of worlds with which we are associated, immeasurable in extent, rich with manifold energy. The four orders of suns : the giants, like Sirius and his fellows; suns, like our own; suns, which show signs of darkening; and multitudes of dead suns; are proof of wonderful revolutions, very remote, both in time and space. Besides, there are double, triple, multiple suns; suns of all colours, and groups of colour in beautiful combinations. Of the real nebulæ are the ring-shaped, the spiral, planetary, and irregular. There are star-cloudlets, also, which cannot be described as mere clusters. Neither the ken of our telescopes, nor the expanse of our imagination, can bring into view the glories, the majesties, of those remote revolutions, countless ages gone, whose light now shines; and these are but as a beginning of the greater, the wider glory, of the remote revolutions in time to come, the perfection of all that has gone before. "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all" (Ps. civ. 24). The widely dissimilar conditions of these worlds are unerring indications of many various modes or states of being. Some, in terrible combustion; some, in cloudy darkness; some, a barren desert. The fountains of vital energy flow with creation's "boundless better and boundless worse than all we know. Everywhere, even in near space and time, are orders, gradations, qualities, of being and of life, altogether hidden from our view. The material framework of Nature is only part of a much grander existence; and is introductory, by its vast system of locality, of adaptation, of movement, to |