through their agency, compelling them to execute His purposes of grace and of correction, and so preparing us, who have learned to call Him Lord, to take part with Him in that universal sovereignty by which He is subjecting all things in heaven and on earth to the will of God, that God may be all in all. To this end He, as our First-Born brother, first-born from the dead, has now entered this temple of the skies. Humanity in Him was cleansed and purified and transformed into the life and light of that unseen realm. And when He entered it all its potent forces recognized Him as its Lord. And we who believe in Him shall be lifted by His mighty power into the same eternal life and glory.

There is, then, a future life for man, a splendid boundless career. Every day, and all the time, we stand upon the boundaries and brush the outskirts of that unseen world. Its shining hosts go trooping by us on the wings of the morning. They make the clouds their chariots. Their blue eyes look down upon us from the sky. All nature is alive with their ministries. The purblind eye of science looks upon these forces as unintelligent hidden properties of matter. Oh, blind science! These forces are God's angels. They are ministers of His that do His pleasure. They are the intelligent eyes in the mighty wheels that move on the mechanism of the universe. And the

Spirit in the wheels is the Spirit of the ascended Christ, who is gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him, and being sent forth by Him as ministering spirits unto them who are heirs of salvation. And He is directing all this wondrous system toward that consummation of the future when He shall be manifested as its Lord, and when, the powers of evil being bound, heaven, the unseen world, shall be opened, and golden ladders of communication shall be set up between earth and heaven, and these two now sundered departments of God's kingdom shall be united, and brought into happy concord, and when His saints shall rise and reign with Him in that holy city which shall come down out of the opened heavens and hang out its banners of light and splendor over this long cursed earth, and when the tabernacle of God shall be with men and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people, and wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things are passed away.

For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him.-COLOSSIANS i. 16.

WE are here taught that creation has two sides, the visible and the invisible. The things we see are by no means the only real things in this created system. The invisible, indeed, occupies the first place in the thought of this passage. For among created things these are the things it specifies: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers." Not seas, clouds, mountains, or stars are spoken of, nor any sensible objects, but certain hidden powers that pervade and dominate the universe.

In all ages men have believed in this reverse side of creation. The old mythologies were based upon this idea of nature as the home and the vehicle of hidden supernal powers. The lightning was the arrow of Jupiter, king of gods and men; the thunder, his voice. In the Bible these unseen powers are called "angels."

This is not only the frequent designation found

in the Psalms and the other poetic books.* The angelic agency by which the stone was rolled away from the door of the sepulchre was an earthquake. (Matt. xxviii. 2.†)

The science of our day concerns itself chiefly with the investigation of "things invisible." To these it gives names such as "light," "heat," "attraction," etc., assuming that these forces are not vital; that they do not belong to the realm of life and intelligence; whereas Scripture contemplates them as living, spiritual powers," thrones, dominions, principalities, powers." Even Christians are accustomed to think of these powers as having no special relation to this system of creation.

The passage we have quoted asserts that they constitute the other side of it. And it is implied that this side is the most important. Even science is ready to admit this of these forces as she conceives of them. She has revealed to us

17.

*Ps. xviii. 10; civ. 3.

Comp. also Acts vii. 53, with Ex. xix. 8, and Ps. lxviii.

It is only within the last thirty or forty years that there has gradually dawned upon the minds of scientific men the conviction that there is something besides matter or stuff in the physical universe, which has at least as much claim as matter to recognition as an objective reality, though of course far less directly obvious to our senses as such and therefore much later in being detected.—“ Unseen Universe," p. 70.

that the things we see and touch are not the only real or important things in the universe, but that, concealed by them, there are other things demanding our attention of surprising interest.

Indeed, now and then, she seems to approximate the truth concerning these powers, as set forth in Scripture.*

Let us pass to observe some of the ways in which science conducts us behind the region of things visible into that of things invisible. A transition into this realm is first made for us by the microscope. It reveals to us arrangements of matter most curious and diversified. Below the surface of things seen there are highly-organized forms of creature life. And these creatures are built up of cells, which are a sort of primary molecules of animate structure. But these cells are themselves structures, and separated in size by ocean-widths from the material atoms which com

A late writer in the Nineteenth Century Magazine says, "I think it may help us to conceive of mind as existing altogether apart from matter if we observe that material powers and influences appear to be more influential as they become more subtle and more nearly immaterial. We may conceive, in fact, of a hierarchy of powers, in which the lowest grade contains the commonest push-andpull forces of ordinary human experience; higher grades may contain the invisible forces of nature; and the highest of all may contain pure mind unmixed with baser matter altogether."