The dissipation of mechanical energy into diffused heat is not rapid, the sun is not wasting or consuming itself very fast; or there could not have been those total eclipses, which did really occur several thousands of years ago; nevertheless, the process is going on; and, despite the conservation of energy, there is a gradual degradation. This cannot have been eternal, as to the past; nor can it be eternal, as to the future; therefore we know that the worlds had a beginning and will have an end; Nature is not self-made nor self-sustaining. It is not less due to common sense, than to science, that we believe in God; and, as to the end of things,

"Where an equal poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate the event, my nature is

That I incline to hope, rather than fear."

Comus.

There is nothing aimless, nothing purposeless; law reigns where even chaos seems to prevail. In our own reason, the powers are not without meaning; hopes and fears are not cloud-based and cloud-capped; nor are our pursuits delusive, to be followed by failure. There is use in the endeavour to unfold perplexities, though no intellect on earth can, as yet, fully solve them. They, like the heart's inmost recesses, are not to be dark for ever. That sacred awful sanctuary, within the veil of the ancient Jewish Temple, was entered once a year by the appointed man, and blessings were brought for all the people. Students of nature who know that this world did not build itself, and does not maintain itself, but is due to some Eternal Power who makes it as a Lodge for Himself, reverently enter the mysteries, inweave their thoughts, more and more, with the

science that testifies of a lasting destiny, and that everything is charged with grandeur.

"That which the fountain sends forth, returns to the fountain.

Patience, accomplish thy labour; accomplish thy work of affection! Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is Godlike. Therefore accomplish thy labour of love, till the heart is made Godlike, Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of Heaven." Longfellow, Evangeline.

The conservation of energy, taking energy as the power of doing work, means that energy is imperishable and immortal. When and wheresoever it seems to vanish in performing mechanical, chemical, and other work, it only undergoes a transformation, and is always of the original amount. What is not transformed passes into space. Picture the worlds as in a perpetual flux; and take a small portion as, isolated from the rest, forming a microcosm; this little world neither parts with any of its energy to the universe beyond, nor receives any from it. Such an isolation cannot be effected, but it is conceivable; and enables us to see how energy is always changing into mechanical work, some into heat, some into electricity, but the sum total of all the energies is always the same. Such is the principle of the conservation of energy.

The sacred great men of the Jews, patriarchs, prophets, priests, had not a scientific, but a sacred conception of the transformation and conservation of energy. The universe, all within them, all without them, was of consecrated meaning. The convertibility of Divine Might, Life, Wisdom, was proved to them; for Creation was the Eternal's handiwork, a revelation of His attributes. Their sense of incompleteness reposed

in the completeness of God; and found, even in the wilderness, a shining way to eternal life. Above the stillness, beyond the awe of natural grandeur, was a consciousness of the Eternal. Every father was as a shadow of the great Fatherhood. Every blade of grass, every tiny flower, every wayside thing, was full of new wonders, strange invisible workings, which none fully understood; but they turned the child's delight into the man's rapture—

"Full of His praises,
Who dead men raises."

George Herbert.

As for men, generally, their sense of Nature as that which becomes; which changes, yet remains; advances, yet continues the same; is the natural feeling that anticipates the scientific apprehension. The patriarchs preceded Moses; the prophets were prior to the apostles; Heraclitus, Democritus, Aristotle, Copernicus, foreran many modern thinkers, even as to the transformation and conservation of energy. Men knew that their substance, hidden from every eye, was curiously fashioned in the lower parts of the earth. So with the earth, and the things of the earth; of heaven, and the things of heaven; of paradise, and the things of paradise; everything was somewhere before it stood manifest. The earth, all the planets and suns are, so to speak, like the building of the Tabernacle by Moses, done from pictures elsewhere. There is a grand convertibility, wide as the universe, a grand transfer from the mind of God by the will of God.

Accepting conservation of energy as a true principle applied to the material universe; it, nevertheless, shows

that every mechanical force is being degraded into a lower force, heat; and, this becoming more and more diffused, the worlds, as now existing, will cease to be fit abodes for such life as we are acquainted with. The physical universe, as a whole, being but an assemblage of all the parts; and, as no part is eternal, the universe is not eternal; because creation, though a manifestation of Deity, is a manifestation of that Deity in limited and external relations. This, true of the universe, is true of every part the force of an atom is part of an atom's relation to Divine Power; the definition or shape of an atom is its relation to space, and, by space, to Infinitude; the influence of an atom, known to be infinitesimally universal, is an infinitesimal aspect of Omnipotence and Omnipresence conjoined. Consequently, every atom, all energy, in changing, in moving through space, is not affected as to its essence by lapse of time. Things, in their reality, are not retrograding to destruction; they possess an infinity of influence, an eternity of being, in many conditions and forms.

This conservatism, which gives to every part of every whole a definite certainty not less than that of the whole, is true of everything. The air, the ground, all water in and on the earth, are full of living creatures. Eye sees them not; touch feels them not; ear hears them not; but they are everywhere; and wherever their little life finds favourable conditions, the multiplying exceeds computation. Every one of these little lives is marvellously complex; and, could we know it all, we should understand the mystery of supreme eternal Power and Life. The same is true as to all intelligences; and we may further add of the intellectual

atmosphere, grounds, and elements of our reason, that they are alive, so to speak, with germs of thought innumerable; due to one Power, one Life, one Wisdom, from whom all things come.

If this be the scientific principle, apply it to that conservation of high, personal, individual identity, by which man consciously remains the same though every part of his body, by dissipation of energy and substance, has been changed. Do we not rightly regard him as something better, nobler, than that smallest material integration of energy, an atom? Is not the integration and definition of human consciousness in its special character an infinitesimal transformation of the Infinite Consciousness? or do you obtain all consciousness from no consciousness—something from nothing? Is not the force of a free, responsible spirit, its appointed relation to Divine Power? Is not its position in space, in time, as a permanent person, a manifestation of that adorable mystery, the Personality of God? Is not this, which we know of God abiding in us, the Divine tie and power that render our nature capable of the Divine Incarnation; and of keeping sacred watch with Jesus

"In the damp night, by weeping Olivet;

Or leaning on His bosom, fond caress;
Or dying with Him, on the raised cross;

Or witnessing His bursting from the tomb "?

Accommodated from Pauline.