true universe which man may know, and glory and rejoice in, but as the spangled veil of night to that unutterable magnificence.

It must be so. If it demands that universe to be, to our eye, that studded vault, what universe must it demand to be, to our sense and to our thought, this world of life and beauty, and those other mighty worlds, silent, yet full of voices, hiding, yet therein more impressively revealing, the treasures of creative power?

What universe? Imagination faints and staggers at the thought, and cannot answer. What can be vaster than the infinitude of space, more than the countless orbs of heaven, more real than the solid earth, higher, lovelier, more perfect than this organic frame, bounding with life? What universe should eclipse this utterly, and show it but a pictured vision, narrowed to the sweep of mortal thought?

Imagination cannot answer. Nor need it. Happily the question is not one for imagination, but for learning. Not proud assurance, nor hasty speculation, but humble willingness to be taught, and patient interpretation of the facts, will avail us here. The field is open. By self abandoning study of all that God presents to us, bending and uniting to one end all our faculties, we shall learn what God's world is.

We shall learn what God's world is. It cannot be too bold to say it. For see, He has given proof to us that He means us to do so. He has given us the means. By giving us two faculties to apprehend it, two modes of studying and investigating it. He has fulfilled the conditions for giving us knowledge; He has revealed His will that we should know. It remains for us to do our But on this point I must

part, and use our powers.

take another opportunity to speak. As also of the

proofs, which seem to be furnished both by present facts and the history of the past, that the comparison I have sought to exhibit is a just one. I may remark one point, in conclusion, for the present. See how sight is glorified, magnified, ennobled, in being made the minister to our astronomical knowledge. What a noble task is committed to it, what splendid achievements it accomplishes, in leading our thoughts through all that infinite domain in which it expatiates, and which, indeed, it alone can reach. Sight is honoured and made glorious, it receives its worthy place and performs its true office, thus. But how did it attain this noble function, and reach its rightful destiny?

By being mistrusted; by being recognised as giving false impressions, and misleading, and needing to be educated, used subordinately, and interpreted. That is how sight attained its true office, and asserted its real dignity and value. May it not be that the intellect must rise to its true dignity and use in the same way?

There is also a moral lesson here. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted, is no arbitrary decree. The secret pulses of universal nature vibrate to that law. And, indeed, this is one proof that material objects are exhibitions to us of holiest things. Spiritual facts speak in them, spiritual light shines through them all, and will not be concealed.

XII.

THE TWO SIDES OF A THING.

(October 1862.)

NOTHING is more characteristic of man's advance in the knowledge of the world around him, than the perpetually recurring demand he meets with to give up his own imaginations, and accept simpler and larger thoughts. Nor indeed could this be otherwise. Since in all our investigations we are really measuring omnipotence by the forms of our own minds, a continual approximation to the truth is all that we can hope for. Nor could that approximation come in any other way than as a perpetual discovery that the powers and causes of which we seem to trace the operation, are in truth only the semblances under which larger agencies of wider sweep and simpler character-have been partially discerned by us. Thus the study of natural Science possesses a double value, and teaches a twofold lesson. The beauty and order of Nature, as it reveals itself more and more widely before our minds, and puts to shame as manifestly inadequate the suppositions by which we have sought to explain it, teaches us lessons about ourselves which we should never, and never can, forget. As we feel how prone we are to mistake, to think what is too small, to erect figments, and hedge ourselves about with limitations, and

how, in order to let the true light even of nature shine into us we have to expand our minds, to free ourselves from shackles, and above all to cast out self from our thought, we feel also what a moral expansion and deliverance must be necessary for us, must be in store for us, before we are fitted to see God. If the knowledge of the creatures demand of us that we grow so much larger, what must the knowledge of the Creator do?

The immense number of new facts which Science accumulates year by year, the unanticipated results which it meets at every turn, the discoveries it makes of innumerable worlds in space, and of worlds within worlds in every object which the microscope explores; all these seem as if they would merely overwhelm the mind, and leave it utterly lost amid the mazes of its own wealth. And they would assuredly have this effect, if there were not another process continually going on in Science, at the same time with this multiplication of its materials. and extension of its view. This process is the simplification of the ideas around which these ever multiplying facts are grouped, and with their simplification the diminution also of their number. So constant and indeed inevitable is this process, that it is no exaggeration to say that when any branch of Science has attained a certain perfection, the more facts and details it contains the easier it will be to understand. And we outsiders, who

look on the process of Science with mingled admiration at its advance, and alarm lest no human mind should prove capacious enough long to grasp a single one of its divisions, may take heart. We shall not be left so

Our hope lies in the

utterly behind as we may fear. discovery of principles; in that reformation, which is sure sooner or later to come in every growing science, of its radical organisation. When that comes, then comes

the turn of the uninitiated world. The multiplied and almost unmeaning series of phenomena receive expression in a law which most probably is self-evident, or at any rate is capable of being easily apprehended. Then we, who seemed to be left hopelessly behind, and condemned to gaze, in the wonder not of knowledge but of ignorance, at a few striking experiments at bright sparks, pretty colours, or graceful forms have our opportunity. We take a short cut, and come up with those more strenuous or hardy travellers who have made a long circuit by the road. It is true we have not seen the prospect, nor experienced the invigorating influence of the walk. But still we enjoy the company and appreciate the view.

We see for instance how easy the system of the heavens became when it was found that the idea of the earth being in the centre was not large enough for it. How magnificent it rises up, and yet how simple! Every child can understand it, and yet no man however wise— however foolish-has been heard to say that he could have given counsel to its Maker. It is the same with

the law of gravity, the same with the pressure of the air, with the circulation of the blood. All truths of this class, when discovered, put to flight a host of difficult and tedious speculations, and add to the common heritage of men what had been the questionable possession of a few. It is like bringing the wild forests of the far west under the plough. The pioneer toils amid savage wastes, but the bright homes of Europe rejoice in the plenty which his labours bring.

A revolution of this kind is taking place now, in relation to a new class of ideas which extended observation is forcing on our scientific men. In respect to everything with which they deal their old notions are