The weak, the unfit, succumb; their death being a necessary prelude to higher life for others, if not for themselves. Physical, organic, mental progress, is wrought by processes wide as the universe; nothing is quiescent, all and everything, the whole and its parts, are seen by the eye of science to weave a living garment for God. Our own worth, even the worth of the universe, lies not so much in what we possess; as in the conflict, as in the faculties connected with it, specially our own faculties which indicate the power of an ever-growing perfection. We kneel reverently to God, and put our ear to nature that we may catch the divine accents of secrets, never loudly proclaimed, always whispered; and we learn at least some letters in that great alphabet of evil which is so full of mystery. We likewise discern some gleams of a splendid process by which the very automatism of nature is, little by little, elevated into that high good-will service of God toward which the psalmist looked when he said, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord" (Ps. cl. 6).

The manifestation of rational order in the universe, viewed even in its apparent failings, does away with feebleness and bootlessness. Eternal Power, clothed with that wisdom which natural order proves; and animated with that Goodness which beauty and joy proclaim; is working by all and every adaptation to a grand result-very noble, very precious. Scientific men discern in the very atoms those potencies by which worlds become glorious; and we look up in faith to the Living God-He has not beautified the earth in vain.

"For Nature, giving instincts, never failed

To give the ends they point to.

So thou with thoughts and longings which our earth
Can never compass in its narrow verge,

Shall the fit regions of thy spirit gain,

And death fulfil the promptings of thy birth."

Westland Marston, Immortality: An Inference.

The universal scheme is one of moral culture, and of redemption from evil. It is calling out the noblest powers in us, and in all things, to pursue that final good which God prepares. The hand of Him who healed the wound made by an angry disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane, will heal all injuries, soothe all sorrows, and wipe away all tears. We study nature in the assurance that "the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers-like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thunder-bear proofs of arrangement where the careless eye sees nothing but accident. Our faculties. brighten in the light of perfect faith. There can be no too much, no too little, though infinite be the mutations.

"Through shifting sea

And lands huge monstrous beasts once took their range

Where now our stately world shows pleasantly!

Then be not fearful at the thought of change;

For though unknown the times that are to be,
Yet shall they prove more beautifully strange."

Charles A. Houfe, The Times to Come.

RESEARCH VIII.

PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONIES FOR NOBLER ENDS.

"Theology deals with the origin and destiny of things; science with things as they are according to human observation of them . . . Theology accepts, without the least reserve, the conclusions of science; it only rejects the claim of science to contain within itself every spring of knowledge, and every domain of thought."-CANON WESTCOTT, The Gospel of the Resurrection, 3rd edit., p. 48.

"Safely gaze

On that which is the final victory of love,
Evolving out of darkness light in heaven."

BICKERSTETH, Yesterday, To-day, and for Ever.

LINES, finer than a spider's web, the nervous filaments of the senses, are our avenues of communication between the world without and the world within. Spread over a little space at the roots of the tongue, they make the savours of nature tributary to our pleasure. Unfolded and ramified over tiny spaces in the olfactory organs, and the hollow of the ear, they enable us to catch the perfumes of every fragrance, and be attent to the many voices of nature. The insect and the song-bird, the roar of thunder, the rush of cataract, the murmur of the ocean, are the earth's orchestral service in the cathedral of the universe. Within a small spot, on the eye's interior, is a chamber of representation where are gathered the glitter

ings of constellations, very remote, even on the verge of space; and there the beauties of every fair landscape are painted quick as thought, and with a flash of light. By a series of pre-established harmonies, our outer man makes the inner man to know of things in heaven and things on earth. Millions of lines, more wonderful than any telegraphy of man, converge in focus for our organs; and are inlets of light and knowledge from the past, the present, and what we know the future will be. We are not the creatures of a moment, but an epitome of the universal, of the infinite Life, of the glorious Eternal.

"There is a soul above the soul of each,

A mightier soul, which yet to each belongs :
There is a sound made of all human speech,
And numerous as the concourse of all songs:
And in that soul lives each, in each that soul,
Through all its ages are its lifetime vast;
Each soul that dies, in its most sacred whole,
Receiveth life that shall for ever last

And live in life that ends not with his breath,
And gather glory that increases still."

Richard Watson Dixon, Humanity.

The weather, so variable; gravity, acting in decreasing power under what seems an invariable law; and all other laws; are by that same magnificent influence which determines, at this moment, the position of every star in space. The crops, grown on our fields, are there as various outcomes of organic matter from inorganic matter; outcomes, by means of greeting from some skyey influences. They are new shapes assumed in the laying aside of old shapes, and will again pass on into other forms. In like manner, our flocks and herds are not by accident, not by a reign of caprice, not by mechanical necessity, but by an accuracy all-perfect,

and by a complexity all-embracing. These, and all other objects, are forms, motions, shadows, from forms and powers invisible. Our spirits, in serene meditation find a grandeur very plain to thought; simple, calm, free. Life merits all our care. Besides sparkles of grace, angels' ministry, with glimpses of the spirit—the seen being ever and always the unseen made manifest ; the best and greatest is this-the instinct and love of truth, however marred, in every one of us, is the promise of that future whither all things tend; is the gleam of that perfect truth, so near to all; yet, at present, by few possessed.

The dust, which cleaves to our fingers when we touch the wings of a butterfly, is a number of tiny feathers. On these feathers, many lines cross one another. Between every pair of these lines, are five or six rows of scales, like the scales of a fish. Select one of the largest of these feathers-a dust-particle taken from the body of a sphinx-it measures one-fifteenth of an inch in length, and one two-hundredth of an inch in breadth, and has one hundred and four longitudinal lines. Between every pair of lines six rows of scales are visible, making the number of these little scales, sideways, six hundred and twenty-four; the number of the scales, downwards, two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight; so that the number of scales on this one little feather amounts to one million four hundred thousand; and the total number, to a wing of one square inch in surface, is fourteen thousand millions. Butterflies and moths, with yet smaller feathers, are calculated to have forty-two thousand million scales on a square inch.