Chapter VII: Part 7

Torricelli's discovery that the air had weight was received with incredulity. For ages the air had propelled ships, thrust itself against the bodies of men, and overturned their works. But no man ever dreamed that weight was necessary to give momentum. During all the centuries it had stood in the Bible, waiting for man's comprehension: "He gave to the air its weight" (Job xxviii. 25).

The pet science of to-day is meteorology. The fluctuations and variations of the weather have hitherto baffled all attempts at unravelling them. It has seemed that there was no law in their fickle changes. But at length perseverance and skill have triumphed, and a single man in one place predicts the weather and winds [Page 235] for a continent. But the Bible has always insisted that the whole department was under law; nay, it laid down that law so clearly, that if men had been willing to learn from it they might have reached this wisdom ages ago. The whole moral law is not more clearly crystallized in "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," than all the fundamentals of the science of meteorology are crystallized in these words: "The wind goeth toward the south (equator), and turneth about (up) unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits (established routes). All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again" (Eccles. i. 6, 7).

Those scientific queries which God propounded to Job were unanswerable then; most of them are so now. "Whereon are the sockets of the earth made to sink?" Job never knew the earth turned in sockets; much less could he tell where they were fixed. God answered this question elsewhere. "He stretcheth the north (one socket) over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." Speaking of the day-spring, God says the earth is _turned_ to it, as clay to the seal. The earth's axial revolution is clearly recognized. Copernicus declared it early; God earlier.

No man yet understands the balancing of the clouds, nor the suspension of the frozen masses of hail, any more than Job did.

Had God asked if he had perceived the _length_ of the earth, many a man to-day could have answered yes. But the eternal ice keeps us from perceiving the _breadth_ [Page 236] of the earth, and shows the discriminating wisdom of the question.

The statement that the sun's going is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it, has given edge to many a sneer at its supposed assertion that the sun went round the earth. It teaches a higher truth--that the sun itself obeys the law it enforces on the planets, and flies in an orbit of its own, from one end of heaven in Argo to the other in Hercules.

So eminent an astronomer and so true a Christian as General Mitchell, who understood the voices in which the heavens declare the glory of God, who read with delight the Word of God em bodied in worlds, and who fed upon the written Word of God as his daily bread, declared, "We find an aptness and propriety in all these astronomical illustrations, which are not weakened, but amazingly strengthened, when viewed in the clear light of our present knowledge." Herschel says, "All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths that come from on high, and are contained in the sacred writings." The common authorship of the worlds and the Word becomes apparent; their common unexplorable wealth is a necessary conclusion.

Since the opening revelations of the past show an unsearchable wisdom in the Word, has that Word any prophecy concerning mysteries not yet understood, and events yet in the future? There are certain problems as yet insolvable. We have grasped many clews, and followed them far into labyrinths of darkness, but not yet through into light.

We ask in vain, "What is matter?" No man can [Page 237] answer. We trace it up through the worlds, till its increasing fineness, its growing power, and possible identity of substance, seem as if the next step would reveal its spirit origin. What we but hesitatingly stammer, the Word boldly asserts.

We ask, "What is force?" No man can answer. We recognize its various grades, each subordinate to the higher--cohesion dissolvable by heat; the affinity of oxygen and hydrogen in water overcome by the piercing intensity of electric fire; rivers seeking the sea by gravitation carried back by the sun; rock turned to soil, soil to flowers; and all the forces in nature measurably subservient to mind. Hence we partly understand what the Word has always taught us, that all lower forces must be subject to that which is highest. How easily can seas be divided, iron made to swim, water to burn, and a dead body to live again, if the highest force exert itself over forces made to be mastered. When we have followed force to its highest place, we always find ourselves considering the forces of mind and spirit, and say, in the words of the Scriptures, "God is spirit."

We ask in vain what is the end of the present condition of things. We have read the history of our globe with great difficulty--its prophecy is still more difficult. We have asked whether the stars form a system, and if so, whether that system is permanent. We are not able to answer yet. We have said that the sun would in time become as icy cold and dead as the moon, and then the earth would wander darkling in the voids of space. But the end of the earth, as prophesied in the Word, is different: "The heavens will pass away with [Page 238] a rushing noise, and the elements will be dissolved with burning heat, and the earth and the works therein will be burned up." The latest conclusions of science point the same way. The great zones of uncondensed matter about the sun seem to constitute a resisting medium as far as they reach. Encke's comet, whose orbit comes near the sun, is delayed. This gives gravitation an overwhelming power, and hence the orbit is lessened and a revolution accomplished more quickly. Faye's comet, which wheels beyond the track of Mars, is not retarded. If the earth moves through a resisting substance, its ultimate fall into the sun is certain. Whether in that far future the sun shall have cooled off, or will be still as hot as to-day, Peter's description would admirably portray the result of the impact. Peters description, however, seems rather to indicate an interference of Divine power at an appropriate time before a running down of the system at present in existence, and a re-endowment of matter with new capabilities.

After thousands of years, science discovered the true way to knowledge. It is the Baconian way of experiment, of trial, of examining the actual, instead of imagining the ideal. It is the acceptance of the Scriptural plan. "If a man wills to do God's will, he shall know." Oh taste and see! In science men try hypotheses, think the best they can, plan broadly as possible, and then see if facts sustain the theory. They have adopted the Scriptural idea of accepting a plan, and then working in faith, in order to acquire knowledge. Fortunately, in the work of salvation the plan is always perfect. But, in order to make the trial under the most favorable circumstances, there must be faith. The faith of [Page 239] science is amazing; its assertions of the supersensual are astounding. It affirms a thousand things that cannot be physically demonstrated: that the flight of a rifle-ball is parabolic; that the earth has poles; that gages are made of particles; that there are atoms; that an electric light gives ten times as many rays as are visible; that there are sounds to which we are deaf, sights to which we are blind; that a thousand objects and activities are about us, for the perception of which we need a hundred senses instead of five. These faiths have nearly all led to sight; they have been rewarded, and the world's wealth of knowledge is the result. The Word has ever asserted the supersensuous, solicited man's faith, and ever uplifted every true faith into sight. Lowell is partly right when he sings:

"Science was Faith once; Faith were science now,
Would she but lay her bow and arrows by,
And aim her with the weapons of the time."

Faith laid her bow and arrows by before men in pursuit of worldly knowledge discovered theirs.

What becomes of the force of the sun that is being spent to-day? It is one of the firmest rocks of science that there can be no absolute destruction of force. It is all conserved somehow. But how? The sun contracts, light results, and leaps swiftly into all encircling space. It can never be returned. Heat from stars invisible by the largest telescope enters the tastimeter, and declares that that force has journeyed from its source through incalculable years. There is no encircling dome to reflect all this force back upon its sources. Is it lost? Science, in defence of its own dogma, should [Page 240] assign light a work as it flies in the space which we have learned cannot be empty. There ought to be a realm where light's inconceivable energy is utilized in building a grander universe, where there is no night. Christ said, as he went out of the seen into the unseen, "I go to prepare a place for you;" and when John saw it in vision the sun had disappeared, the moon was gone, but the light still continued.

Science finds matter to be capable of unknown refinement; water becomes steam full of amazing capabilities: we add more heat, superheat the steam, and it takes on new aptitudes and uncontrollable energy. Zinc burned in acid becomes electricity, which enters iron as a kind of soul, to fill all that body with life. All matter is capable of transformation, if not transfiguration, till it shines by the light of an indwelling spirit. Scripture readers know that bodies and even garments can be transfigured, be made astrapton (Luke xxiv. 4), shining with an inner light. They also look for new heavens and a new earth endowed with higher powers, fit for perfect beings.

When God made matter, so far as our thought permits us to know, he simply made force stationary and unconscious. Thereafter he moves through it with his own will. He can at any time change these forces, making air solid, water and rock gaseous, a world a cloud, or a fire-mist a stone. He may at some time restore all force to consciousness again, and make every part of the universe thrill with responsive joy. "Then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands." One of these changes is to come to the earth. [Page 241] Amidst great noise the heaven shall flee, the earth be burned up, and all their forces be changed to new forms. Perhaps it will not then be visible to mortal eyes. Perhaps force will then be made conscious, and the flowers thereafter return our love as much as lower creatures do now. A river and tree of life may be consciously alive, as well as give life. Poets that are nearest to God are constantly hearing the sweet voices of responsive feeling in nature.

"For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile,
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware."

Prophets who utter God's voice of truth say, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for holy men, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing."

Distinguish clearly between certainty and surmise. The certainty is that the world will pass through catastrophic changes to a perfect world. The grave of uniformitarianism is already covered with grass. He that creates promises to complete. The invisible, imponderable, inaudible ether is beyond our apprehension; it transmits impressions 186,000 miles a second; it is millions of times more capable and energetic than air. What may be the bounds of its possibility none can imagine, for law is not abrogated nor designs disregarded as we ascend into higher realms. Law works out more beautiful designs with more absolute certainty. Why [Page 242] should there not be a finer universe than this, and disconnected from this world altogether--a fit home for immortal souls? It is a necessity.

God filleth all in all, is everywhere omnipotent and wise. Why should there be great vacuities, barren of power and its creative outgoings? God has fixed the stars as proofs of his agency at some points in space. But is it in points only? Science is proud of its discovery that what men once thought to be empty space is more intensely active than the coarser forms of matter can be. But in the long times which are past Job glanced at earth, seas, clouds, pillars of heaven, stars, day, night, all visible things, and then added: "Lo! these are only the outlying borders of his works. What a whisper of a word we hear of _Him!_ The thunder of his power who can comprehend?"

Science discovers that man is adapted for mastery in this world. He is of the highest order of visible creatures. Neither is it possible to imagine an order of beings generically higher to be connected with the conditions of the material world. This whole secret was known to the author of the oldest writing. "And God blessed them, and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The idea is never lost sight of in the sacred writings. And while every man knows he must fail in one great contest, and yield himself to death, the later portions of the divine Word offer him victory even here. The typical man is commissioned to destroy even death, and make man a sharer in the victory. [Page 243] Science babbles at this great truth of man's position like a little child; Scripture treats it with a breadth of perfect wisdom we are only beginning to grasp.

Science tells us that each type is prophetic of a higher one. The whale has bones prophetic of a human hand. Has man reached perfection? Is there no prophecy in him? Not in his body, perhaps; but how his whole soul yearns for greater beauty. As soon as he has found food, the savage begins to carve his paddle, and make himself gorgeous with feathers. How man yearns for strength, subduing animal and cosmic forces to his will! How he fights against darkness and death, and strives for perfection and holiness! These prophecies compel us to believe there is a world where powers like those of electricity and luminiferous ether are ever at hand; where its waters are rivers of life, and its trees full of perfect healing, and from which all unholiness is forever kept. What we infer, Scripture affirms.

Science tells us there has been a survival of the fittest. Doubtless this is so. So in the future there will be a survival of the fittest. What is it? Wisdom, gentleness, meekness, brotherly kindness, and charity. Over those who have these traits death hath no permanent power. The caterpillar has no fear as he weaves his own shroud; for there is life within fit to survive, and ere long it spreads its gorgeous wings, and flies in the air above where once it crawled. Man has had two states of being already. One confined, dark, peculiarly nourished, slightly conscious; then he was born into another--wide, differently nourished, and intensely [Page 244] conscious. He knows he may be born again into a life wider yet, differently nourished, and even yet more intensely conscious. Science has no hint how a long ascending series of developments crowned by man may advance another step, and make man isaggelos--equal to angels. But the simplest teaching of Scripture points out a way so clear that a child need not miss the glorious consummation.

When Uranus hastened in one part of its orbit, and then retarded, and swung too wide, men said there must be another attracting world beyond; and, looking there, Neptune was found. So, when individual men are so strong that nations or armies cannot break down their wills; so brave, that lions have no terrors; so holy, that temptation cannot lure nor sin defile them; so grand in thought, that men cannot follow; so pure in walk, that God walks with them--let us infer an attracting world, high and pure and strong as heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a roll-call of heroes of whom this world was not worthy. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. The world to come influenced, as it were, the orbits of their souls, and when their bodies fell off, earth having no hold on them, they sped on to their celestial home. The tendency of such souls necessitates such a world.

The worlds and the Word speak but one language, teach but one set of truths. How was it possible that the writers of the earlier Scriptures described physical phenomena with wonderful sublimity, and with such penetrative truth? They gazed upon the same heaven that those men saw who ages afterward led the world in knowledge. These latter were near-sighted, and absorbed [Page 245] in the pictures on the first veil of matter; the former were far-sighted, and penetrated a hundred strata of thickest material, and saw the immaterial power behind. The one class studied the present, and made the gravest mistakes; the other pierced the uncounted ages of the past, and uttered the profoundest wisdom. There is but one explanation. He that planned and made the worlds inspired the Word.

Science and religion are not two separate departments, they are not even two phases of the same truth. Science has a broader realm in the unseen than in the seen, in the source of power than in the outcomes of power, in the sublime laws of spirit than in the laws of matter; and religion sheds its beautiful light over all stages of life, till, whether we eat or whether we drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all for the glory of God. Science and religion make common confession that the great object of life is to learn and to grow. Both will come to see the best possible means, for the attainment of this end is a personal relation to a teacher who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

[Page 247] XII.

THE ULTIMATE FORCE.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things became by him, and without him was not anything made that was made * * * and by him all things stand together."

[Page 248]
"O thou eternal one; whose presence blight
All space doth occupy--all motion guide--
Thou from primeval nothingness didst call
First chaos, then existence. Lord, on thee
Eternity had its foundation: all
Sprung forth from thee--of light, joy, harmony,
Sole origin: all life, all beauty thine.
Thy word created all, and doth create;
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine;
Thou art and wert, and shalt be glorious, great;
Life-giving, life-sustaining Potentate,
Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround--
Upheld by thee, by thee inspired with breath."
DERZHAVIN.

[Page 249] XII.

_THE ULTIMATE FORCE._

The universe is God's name writ large. Thought goes up the shining suns as golden stairs, and reads the consecutive syllables--all might, and wisdom, and beauty; and if the heart be fine enough and pure enough, it also reads everywhere the mystic name of love. Let us learn to read the hieroglyphics, and then turn to the blazonry of the infinite page. That is the key-note; the heavens and the earth declaring the glory of God, and men with souls attuned listening.

To what voices shall we listen first? Stand on the shore of a lake set like an azure gem among the bosses of green hills. The patter of rain means an annual fall of four cubic feet of water on every square foot of it. It weighs two hundred and forty pounds to the cubic foot, one hundred million tons on the surface of a little sheet of water twenty miles long by three wide. Now, all that weight of falling rain had to be lifted, a work compared to which taking up mountains and casting them into the sea is pastime. All that water had to be taken up before it could be cast down, and carried hundreds of miles before it could be there. You have heard Niagara's thunder; have stood beneath the falling immensity; seen it ceaselessly poured from an infinite hand; felt that you would be ground to atoms if you fell into that resistless flood. Well, all that infinity of [Page 250] water had to be lifted by main force, had to be taken up out of the far Pacific, brought over the Rocky Mountains; and the Mississippi keeps bearing its wide miles of water to the Gulf, and Niagara keeps thundering age after age, because there is power somewhere to carry the immeasurable floods all the time the other way in the upper air.

But this is only the Alpha of power. Professor Clark, of Amherst, Massachusetts, found that such a soft and pulpy thing as a squash had so great a power of growth that it lifted three thousand pounds, and held it day and night for months. It toiled and grew under the growing weight, compacting its substance like oak to do the work. All over the earth this tremendous power and push of life goes on--in the little star-eyed flowers that look up to God only on the Alpine heights, in every tuft of grass, in every acre of wheat, in every mile of prairie, and in every lofty tree that wrestles with the tempests of one hundred winters. But this is only the B in the alphabet of power.

Rise above the earth, and you find the worlds tossed like playthings, and hurled seventy times as fast as a rifle-ball, never an inch out of place or a second out of time. But this is only the C in the alphabet of power.

Rise to the sun. It is a quenchless reservoir of high-class energy. Our tornadoes move sixty miles an hour, those of the sun twenty thousand miles an hour. A forest on fire sends its spires of flame one hundred feet in air, the sun sends its spires of flame two hundred thousand miles. All our fires exhaust the fuel and burn out. If the sun were pure coal, it would burn out in five thousand years; and yet this sea of unquenchable [Page 251] flame seethes and burns, and rolls and vivifies a dozen worlds, and flashes life along the starry spaces for a million years without any apparent diminution. It sends out its power to every planet, in the vast circle in which it lies. It fills with light not merely a whole circle, but a dome; not merely a dome above, but one below, and on every side. At our distance of ninety-two and a half millions of miles, the great earth feels that power in gravitation, tides, rains, winds, and all possible life--every part is full of power. Fill the earth's orbit with a circle of such receptive worlds--seventy thousand instead of one--everyone would be as fully supplied with power from this central source. More. Fill the whole dome, the entire extent of the surrounding sphere, bottom, sides, top, a sphere one hundred and eighty-five million miles in diameter, and everyone of these uncountable worlds would be touched with the same power as one; each would thrill with life. This is only the D of the alphabet of power. And glancing up to the other suns, one hundred, five hundred, twelve hundred times as large, double, triple, septuple, multiple suns, we shall find power enough to go through the whole alphabet in geometrical ratio; and then in the clustered suns, galaxies, and nebulæ, power enough still unrepresented by single letters to require all combinations of the alphabet of power. What is the significance of this single element of power? The answer of science to-day is "correlation," the constant evolution of one force from another. Heat is a mode of motion, motion a result of heat. So far so good. But are we mere reasoners in a circle? Then we would be lost men, treading our round of death in a limitless forest. What is the ultimate? Reason [Page 252] out in a straight line. No definition of matter allows it to originate force; only mind can do that. Hence the ultimate force is always mind. Carry your correlation as far as you please--through planets, suns, nebulæ, concretionary vortices, and revolving fire-mist--there must always be mind and will beyond. Some of that willpower that works without exhaustion must take its own force and render it static, apparent. It may do this in such correlated relation that that force shall go on year after year to a thousand changing forms; but that force must originate in mind.

Go out in the falling rain, stand under the thunderous Niagara, feel the immeasurable rush of life, see the hanging worlds, and trace all this--the carried rain, the terrific thunder with God's bow of peace upon it, and the unfailing planets hung upon nothing--trace all this to the orb of day blazing in perpetual strength, but stop not there. Who _made_ the sun? Contrivance fills all thought. _Who_ made the sun? Nature says there is a mind, and that mind is Almighty. Then you have read the first syllables, viz., being and power.

What is the continuous relation of the universe to the mind from which it derived its power? Some say that it is the relation of a wound-up watch to the winder. It was dowered with sufficient power to revolve its ceaseless changes, and its maker is henceforth an absentee God. Is it? Let us have courage to see. For twenty years one devotes ten seconds every night to putting a little force into a watch. It is so arranged that it distributes that force over twenty-four hours. In that twenty years more power has been put into that watch than a horse could exert at once. But suppose [Page 253] one had tried to put all that force into the watch at once: it would have pulverized it to atoms. But supposing the universe had been dowered with power at first to run its enormous rounds for twenty millions of years. It is inconceivable; steel would be as friable as sand, and strengthless as smoke, in such strain.

We have discovered some of the laws of the force we call gravitation. But what do we know of its essence? How it appears to act we know a little, what it is we are profoundly ignorant. Few men ever discuss this question. All theories are sublimely ridiculous, and fail to pass the most primary tests. How matter can act where it is not, and on that with which it has no connection, is inconceivable.

Newton said that anyone who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, could not admit for a moment the possibility of a sun reaching through millions of miles, and exercising there an attractive power. A watch may run if wound up, but how the watch-spring in one pocket can run the watch in another is hard to see. A watch is a contrivance for distributing a force outside of itself, and if the universe runs at all on that principle, it distributes some force outside of itself.

Le Sage's theory of gravitation by the infinitive hail of atoms cannot stand a minute, hence we come back as a necessity of thought to Herschel's statement. "It is but reasonable to regard gravity as a result of a consciousness and a will existent somewhere." Where? I read an old book speaking of these matters, and it says of God, He hangeth the earth upon nothing; he upholdeth constantly all things by the word of his power. [Page 254] By him all things consist or hold together. It teaches an imminent mind; an almighty, constantly exerted power. Proof of this starts up on every side. There is a recognized tendency in all high-class energy to deteriorate to a lower class. There is steam in the boiler, but it wastes without fuel. There is electricity in the jar, but every particle of air steals away a little, unless our conscious force is exerted to regather it. There is light in the sun, but infinite space waits to receive it, and takes it swift as light can leap. We said that if the sun were pure coal, it would burn out in five thousand years, but it blazes undimmed by the million. How can it? There have been various theories: chemical combustion, it has failed; meteoric impact, it is insufficient; condensation, it is not proved; and if it were, it is an intermediate step back to the original cause of condensation. The far-seeing eyes see in the sun the present active power of Him who first said, "Let there be light," and who at any moment can meet a Saul in the way to Damascus with a light above the brightness of the sun--another noon arisen on mid-day; and of whom it shall be said in the eternal state of unclouded brightness, where sun and moon are no more, "The glory of the Lord shall lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."

But suppose matter could be dowered, that worlds could have a gravitation, one of two things must follow: It must have conscious knowledge of the position, exact weight, and distance of every atom, mass, and world, in order to proportion the exact amount of gravity, or it must fill infinity with an omnipresent attractive power, pulling in myriads of places at nothing; in [Page 255] a few places at worlds. Every world must exert an infinitely extended power, but myriads of infinities cannot be in the same space. The solution is, one infinite power and conscious will.

To see the impossibility of every other solution, join in the long and microscopic hunt for the ultimate particle, the atom; and if found, or if not found, to a consideration of its remarkable powers. Bring telescopes and microscopes, use all strategy, for that atom is difficult to catch. Make the first search with the microscope: we can count 112,000 lines ruled on a glass plate inside of an inch. But we are here looking at mountain ridges and valleys, not atoms. Gold can be beaten to the 1/340000 of an inch. It can be drawn as the coating of a wire a thousand times thinner, to the 1/340000000 of an inch. But the atoms are still heaped one upon another.

Take some of the infusorial animals. Alonzo Gray says millions of them would not equal in bulk a grain of sand. Yet each of them performs the functions of respiration, circulation, digestion, and locomotion. Some of our blood-vessels are not a millionth of our size. What must be the size of the ultimate particles that freely move about to nourish an animal whose totality is too small to estimate? A grain of musk gives off atoms enough to scent every part of the air of a room. You detect it above, below, on every side. Then let the zephyrs of summer and the blasts of winter sweep through that room for forty years, bearing out into the wide world miles on miles of air, all perfumed from the atoms of that grain of musk, and at the end of the forty years the weight of musk has not appreciably diminished. [Page 256] Yet uncountable myriads on myriads of atoms have gone.

Our atom is not found yet. Many are the ways of searching for it which we cannot stop to consider. We will pass in review the properties with which materialists preposterously endow it. It is impenetrable and indivisible, though some atoms are a hundred times larger than others. Each has definite shape; some one shape, and some another. They differ in weight, in quantity of combining power, in quality of combining power. They combine with different substances, in certain exact assignable quantities. Thus one atom of hydrogen combines with eighty of bromine, one hundred and sixty of mercury, two hundred and forty of boron, three hundred and twenty of silicon, etc. Hence our atom of hydrogen must have power to count, or at least to measure, or be cognizant of bulk. Again, atoms are of different sorts, as positive or negative to electric currents. They have power to take different shapes with different atoms in crystallization; that is, there is a power in them, conscious or otherwise, that the same bricks shall make themselves into stables or palaces, sewers or pavements, according as the mortar varies. "No, no," you cry out; "it is only according as the builder varies his plan." There is no need to rehearse these powers much further; though not one-tenth of the supposed innate properties of this infinitesimal infinite have been recited--properties which are expressed by the words atomicity, quantivilence, monad, dryad, univalent, perissad, quadrivalent, and twenty other terms, each expressing some endowment of power in this in visible atom. Refer to one more presumed ability, an ability [Page 257] to keep themselves in exact relation of distance and power to each other, without touching.

It is well known that water does not fill the space it occupies. We can put eight or ten similar bulks of different substances into a glass of water without greatly increasing its bulk, some actually diminishing it. A philosopher has said that the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than one hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface of England, one man to four hundred square miles.

The atoms of the luminiferous ether are infinitely more diffused, and yet its interactive atoms can give four hundred millions of light-waves a second. And now, more preposterous than all, each atom has an attractive power for every other atom of the universe. The little mote, visible only in a sunbeam streaming through a dark room, and the atom, infinitely smaller, has a grasp upon the whole world, the far-off sun, and the stars that people infinite space. The Sage of Concord advises you to hitch your wagon to a star. But this is hitching all stars to an infinitesimal part of a wagon. Such an atom, so dowered, so infinite, so conscious, is an impossible conception.

But if matter could be so dowered as to produce such results by mechanism, could it be dowered to produce the results of intelligence? Could it be dowered with power of choice without becoming mind? If oxygen and hydrogen could be made able to combine into water, could the same unformed matter produce in one case a plant, in another a bird, in a third a man; and in each of these put bone, brain, blood, and nerve in [Page 258] proper relations? Matter must be mind, or subject to a present working mind, to do this. There must be a present intelligence directing the process, laying the dead bricks, marble, and wood in an intelligent order for a living temple. If we do put God behind a single veil in dead matter, in all living things he must be apparent and at work. If, then, such a thing as an infinite atom is impossible, shall we not best understand matter by saying it is a visible representation of God's personal will and power, of his personal force, and perhaps knowledge, set aside a little from himself, still possessed somewhat of his personal attributes, still responsive to his will. What we call matter may be best understood as God's force, will, knowledge, rendered apparent, static, and unweariably operative. Unless matter is eternal, which is unthinkable, there was nothing out of which the world could be made, but God himself; and, reverently be it said, matter seems to retain fit capabilities for such source. Is not this the teaching of the Bible? I come to the old Book. I come to that man who was taken up into the arcana of the third heaven, the holy of holies, and heard things impossible to word. I find he makes a clear, unequivocal statement of this truth as God's revelation to him. "By faith," says the author of Hebrews, "we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." In Corinthians, Paul says--But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom [as a source] are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [as a creative worker] are all things. So in Romans he says--"For out of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen."

[Page 259] God's intimate relation to matter is explained. No wonder the forces respond to his will; no wonder pantheism--the idea that matter is God--has had such a hold upon the minds of men. Matter, derived from him, bears marks of its parentage, is sustained by him, and when the Divine will shall draw it nearer to himself the new power and capabilities of a new creation shall appear. Let us pay a higher respect to the attractions and affinities; to the plan and power of growth; to the wisdom of the ant; the geometry of the bee; the migrating instinct that rises and stretches its wings toward a provided South--for it is all God's present wisdom and power. Let us come to that true insight of the old prophets, who are fittingly called seers; whose eyes pierced the veil of matter, and saw God clothing the grass of the field, feeding the sparrows, giving snow like wool and scattering hoar-frost like ashes, and ever standing on the bow of our wide-sailing world, and ever saying to all tumultuous forces, "Peace, be still." Let us, with more reverent step, walk the leafy solitudes, and say:

"Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns: Thou
Did'st weave this verdant roof. Thou did'st look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwise rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They in Thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in Thy breeze.

"That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath and looks so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling life,
A visible token of the unfolding love
That are the soul of this wide universe."--BRYANT.

[Page 260] Philosophy has seen the vast machine of the universe, wheel within wheel, in countless numbers and hopeless intricacy. But it has not had the spiritual insight of Ezekiel to see that they were everyone of them full of eyes--God's own emblem of the omniscient supervision.

What if there are some sounds that do not seem to be musically rhythmic. I have seen where an avalanche broke from the mountain side and buried a hapless city; have seen the face of a cliff shattered to fragments by the weight of its superincumbent mass, or pierced by the fingers of the frost and torn away. All these thunder down the valley and are pulverized to sand. Is this music? No, but it is a tuning of instruments. The rootlets seize the sand and turn it to soil, to woody fibre, leafy verdure, blooming flowers, and delicious fruit. This asks life to come, partake, and be made strong. The grass gives itself to all flesh, the insect grows to feed the bird, the bird to nourish the animal, the animal to develop the man.

Notwithstanding the tendency of all high-class energy to deteriorate, to find equilibrium, and so be strengthless and dead, there is, somehow, in nature a tremendous push upward. Ask any philosopher, and he will tell you that the tendency of all endowed forces is to find their equilibrium and be at rest--that is, dead. He draws a dismal picture of the time when the sun shall be burned out, and the world float like a charnel ship through the dark, cold voids of space--the sun a burned-out char, a dead cinder, and the world one dismal silence, cold beyond measure, and dead beyond consciousness. The philosopher has wailed a dirge without [Page 261] hope, a requiem without grandeur, over the world's future. But nature herself, to all ears attuned, sings pæans, and shouts to men that the highest energy, that of life, does not deteriorate.

Mere nature may deteriorate. The endowments of force must spend themselves. Wound-up watches and worlds must run down. But nature sustained by unexpendable forces must abide. Nature filled with unexpendable forces continues in form. Nature impelled by a magnificent push of life must ever rise.

Study her history in the past. Sulphurous realms of deadly gases become solid worlds; surplus sunlight becomes coal, which is reserved power; surplus carbon becomes diamonds; sediments settle until the heavens are azure, the air pure, the water translucent. If that is the progress of the past, why should it deteriorate in the future?

There is a system of laws in the universe in which the higher have mastery over the lower. Lower powers are constitutionally arranged to be overcome; higher powers are constitutionally arranged for mastery. At one time the water lies in even layers near the ocean's bed, in obedience to the law or power of gravitation. At another time it is heaved into mountain billows by the shoulders of the wind. Again it flies aloft in the rising mists of the morning, transfigured by a thousand rain bows by the higher powers of the sun. Again it develops the enormous force of steam by the power of heat. Again it divides into two light flying airs by electricity. Again it stands upright as a heap by the power of some law in the spirit realm, whose mode of working we are not yet large enough [Page 262] to comprehend. The water is solid, liquid, gaseous on earth, and in air according to the grade of power operating upon it.

The constant invention of man finds higher and higher powers. Once he throttled his game, and often perished in the desperate struggle; then he trapped it; then pierced it with the javelin; then shot it with an arrow, or set the springy gases to hurl a rifle-ball at it. Sometime he may point at it an electric spark, and it shall be his. Once he wearily trudged his twenty miles a day, then he took the horse into service and made sixty; invoked the winds, and rode on their steady wings two hundred and forty; tamed the steam, and made almost one thousand; and if he cannot yet send his body, he can his mind, one thousand miles a second. It all depends upon the grade of power he uses. Now, hear the grand truth of nature: as the years progress the higher grades of power increase. Either by discovery or creation, there are still higher class forces to be made available. Once there was no air, no usable electricity. There is no lack of those higher powers now. The higher we go the more of them we find. Mr. Lockyer says that the past ten years have been years of revelation concerning the sun. A man could not read in ten years the library of books created in that time concerning the sun. But though we have solved certain problems and mysteries, the mysteries have increased tenfold.

We do not know that any new and higher forces have been added to matter since man's acquaintance with it. But it would be easy to add any number of them, or change any lower into higher. That is the [Page 263] meaning of the falling granite that becomes soil, of the pulverized lava that decks the volcano's trembling sides with flowers; that is the meaning of the grass becoming flesh, and of all high forces constitutionally arranged for mastery over lower. Take the ore from the mountain. It is loose, friable, worthless in itself. Raise it in capacity to cast-iron, wrought-iron, steel, it becomes a highway for the commerce of nations, over the mountains and under them. It becomes bones, muscles, body for the inspiring soul of steam. It holds up the airy bridge over the deep chasm. It is obedient in your hand as blade, hammer, bar, or spring. It is inspirable by electricity, and bears human hopes, fears, and loves in its own bosom. It has been raised from valueless ore. Change it again to something as far above steel as that is above ore. Change all earthly ores to highest possibility; string them to finest tissues, and the new result may fit God's hand as tools, and thrill with his wisdom and creative processes, a body fitted for God's spirit as well as the steel is fitted to your hand. From this world take opacity, gravity, darkness, bring in more mind, love, and God, and then we will have heaven. An immanent God makes a plastic world.

When man shall have mastered the forces that now exist, the original Creator and Sustainer will say, "Behold, I create all things new." Nature shall be called nearer to God, be more full of his power. To the long-wandering Æneas, his divine mother sometimes came to cheer his heart and to direct his steps. But the goddess only showed herself divine by her departure; only when he stood in desolation did the hero know he had [Page 264] stood face to face with divine power, beauty, and love. Not so the Christian scholars, the wanderers in Nature's bowers to-day. In the first dawn of discovery, we see her full of beauty and strength; in closer communion, we find her full of wisdom; to our perfect knowledge, she reveals an indwelling God in her; to our ardent love, she reveals an indwelling God in us.

But the evidence of the progressive refinements of habitation is no more clear than that of progressive refinement of the inhabitant: there must be some one to use these finer things. An empty house is not God's ideal nor man's. The child may handle a toy, but a man must mount a locomotive; and before there can be New Jerusalems with golden streets, there must be men more avaricious of knowledge than of gold, or they would dig them up; more zealous for love than jewels, or they would unhang the pearly gates. The uplifting refinement of the material world has been kept back until there should appear masterful spirits able to handle the higher forces. Doors have opened on every side to new realms of power, when men have been able to wield them. If men lose that ability they close again, and shut out the knowledge and light. Then ages, dark and feeble, follow.

Some explore prophecy for the date of the grand transformation of matter by the coming of the Son of Man, for a new creation. A little study of nature would show that the date cannot be fixed. A little study of Peter would show the same thing. He says, "What manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming [Page 265] of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth."

The idea is, that the grand transformation of matter waits the readiness of man. The kingdom waits the king. The scattered cantons of Italy were only prostrate provinces till Victor Emanuel came, then they were developed into united Italy. The prostrate provinces of matter are not developed until the man is victor, able to rule there a realm equal to ten cities here. Every good man hastens the coming of the day of God and nature's renovation. Not only does inference teach that there must be finer men, but fact affirms that transformation has already taken place. Life is meant to have power over chemical forces. It separates carbon from its compounds and builds a tree, separates the elements and builds the body, holds them separate until life withdraws. More life means higher being. Certainly men can be refined and recapacitated as well as ore. In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" he represents the lion in process of formation from earth, hind quarters still clay, but fore quarters, head, erect mane, and blazing eye--live lion--and pawing to get free. We have seen winged spirits yet linked to forms of clay, but beating the celestial air, endeavoring to be free; and we have seen them, dowered with new sight, filled with new love, break loose and rise to higher being.

In this grand apotheosis of man which nature teaches, progress lias already been made. Man has already outgrown his harmony with the environment of mere matter. He has given his hand to science, and been lifted up above the earth into the voids of infinite space. He [Page 266] has gone on and on, till thought, wearied amidst the infinities of velocity and distance, has ceased to note them. But he is not content; all his faculties are not filled. He feels that his future self is in danger of not being satisfied with space, and worlds, and all mental delights, even as his manhood fails to be satisfied with the materiel toys of his babyhood. He asks for an Author and Maker of things, infinitely above them. He has seen wisdom unsearchable, power illimitable; but he asks for personal sympathy and love. Paul expresses his feeling: every creature--not the whole creation--groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for the adoption--the uplifting from orphanage to parentage--a translation out of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. He hears that a man in Christ is a new creation: old things pass away, all things become new. There is then a possibility of finding the Author of nature, and the Father of man. He begins his studies anew. Now he sees that all lines of knowledge converge as they go out toward the infinite mystery; sees that these converging lines are the reins of government in this world; sees the converging lines grasped by an almighty hand; sees a loving face and form behind; sees that these lines of knowledge and power are his personal nerves, along which flashes his will, and every force in the universe answers like a perfect muscle.

Then he asks if this Personality is as full of love as of power. He is told of a tenderness too deep for tears, a love that has the Cross for its symbol, and a dying cry for its expression: seeking it, he is a new creation. He sees more wondrous things in the Word than in the [Page 267] world. He comes to know God with his heart, better than he knows God's works by his mind.

Every song closes with the key-note with which it began, and the brief cadence at the close hints the realms of sound through which it has tried its wings. The brief cadence at the close is this: All force runs back into mind for its source, constant support, and uplifts into higher grades.

Mr. Grove says, "Causation is the will, creation is the act, of God." Creation is planned and inspired for the attainment of constantly rising results. The order is chaos, light, worlds, vegetable forms, animal life, then man. There is no reason to pause here. This is not perfection, not even perpetuity. Original plans are not accomplished, nor original force exhausted. In another world, free from sickness, sorrow, pain, and death, perfection of abode is offered. Perfection of inhabitant is necessary; and as the creative power is everywhere present for the various uplifts and refinements of matter, it is everywhere present with appropriate power for the uplifting and refinement of mind and spirit.

[Page 269] SUMMARY OF LATEST DISCOVERIES AND CONCLUSIONS.

_Movements on the Sun._--The discovery and measurement of the up-rush, down-rush, and whirl of currents about the sunspots, also of the determination of the velocity of rotation by means of the spectroscope, as described (page 53), is one of the most delicate and difficult achievements of modern science.

_Movement of Stars in Line of Sight_ (page 51).--The following table shows this movement of stars, so far as at present known: