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lowed fellowship, levels those barriers by which our spiritual consciousness is guarded.

The Invisible World is revealed for a very different purpose: that we may know of the reaping which follows our present sowing, that we may have fellowship with God, partake of His Divine Nature through the Incarnation of Christ, and be personally holy by operation of the Holy Ghost.

The New Jerusalem is a city in that world, spiritual gold paves its streets, and around the safe and blissful homes jasper walls are a defence. Earth holds no such city; nor sea such pearls, nor caverns the rubies and diamonds, that adorn the inhabitants of heaven; and so many are the great men there that we shall know more of them than we do on earth. It is true that, here on earth, the leaves of every forest, the flowers of every garden, the waters of every rivulet, contain inner worlds teeming with life; and we learn from them that beyond and above all that is visible are fields of creation immeasurably vast and gloriously beautiful. When the curtain that hides them from view is drawn aside, we shall behold more and greater wonders than astronomy has unfolded: find that, as a universe may be contained in the compass of a point, our wonder-working God fills infinitude with these inner worlds, enclosed within spheres supremely varied and majestic, that the evidences of His glory may afford eternal blissful occupation to innumerable multitudes of holy, happy creatures.

STUDY XX.

VARIETY IN NATURE.

"Nisi Deus esset immutabilis, nulla mutabilis natura permaneret."

"See God's hand in all things. . . believe that things are not set in such inevitable order, but that God often changeth it according as He sees fit.”— GEORGE HERBERT.

"To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may be seen.'

THE general invariability of natural law must be taken as a fundamental fact without which no scientific interpretation of Nature is possible. The same things will always happen under the same conditions. If gravitation acted sometimes at one angle, sometimes at another, instead of pulling in a straight line, the cry of "stand from under!" would be a delusion and a snare. The most hidden and unaccountable movements, the fitful agitations of the weather, the waving of every leaf, the number of drops in a shower, the shaping of clouds, are by a rule so wise and strong that error, chance, mischance, can never enter.

Natural uniformity is sometimes made to appear-not an order laid down by Infinite Wisdom for beneficent and effectual rule, but a chain of fate blindly, rigorously, invariably, binding all things with iron links of necessity. We agree with Mr. John Stuart Mill that, next to the greatness of the cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes one is their recklessness-they go straight to their end without regarding what or whom they crush on the road: but enlarged consideration shows that this seeming recklessness is beneficent, by calling upon intelligence to provide safeguards and remedies; it, in fact, enables the will of man to count for something in the world.

The uniformity of Nature and the invariability of law are

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not rightly understood, nor well interpreted, unless we know and act upon them as a platform for infinite variety. Laws are conservative, yet the untiring agents of change; and the ever-varying conditions of time, place, material combination, render it certain that no two series of phenomena can be absolutely the same. If, on the one side, a man maintains law is uniform and universal; he may be met, on the other side, with the fact that it incloses infinite diversity and a series of surprises. Out of darkness we extract most brilliant light, and analyse white light into all the colours. looking at the field in winter, would predict, were it not for experience, the fruitfulness and glow of harvest? What man is able to prophesy why and how the caterpillar has a resurrection life of winged beauty? why and how the seed attains. development in herb and flower, in shrub or tree? Nature is not one-sided, but all-sided. The student of physics carries the light of his private intelligence only a little way, and on one line, into the dark by which knowledge is surrounded; but Nature faces us on all sides, carries on her work centripetally, centrifugally, circularly, in spirals, ever extending into wider regions of the all-embracing infinitude. What seem the wildest meteors of our imagination are sometimes proved to be brightest flashes of thought-with counterpart in the world of fact. Intellectual penetration of surrounding darkness depends not so much on method as on spiritual insight the force carrying furthest is that of genius in the investigator. Our experiments constitute a body, of which purified intuitions are the soul; "we can also magnify, diminish, qualify, and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new.” 1

Law, far from being an argument against, is a prevailing plea for miracles. It may be thus stated-Where all things are by chance, no law exists. Law produces that invariability of mechanical action in the universe which renders miracles possible and necessary, it is the platform for miraculous operation. Uniformity of law, when brought into connection with the novel relations consequent on the contrary or consentaneous acts of free beings, gives rise to novel effects. To prevent, 1 "Scientific Materialism :" John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S.

restrain, or enlarge these, new powers must be evoked: miracles are the result of these powers.

This view renders it possible to establish conformity between the Scientific idea of Law and the Theological idea of Will— Will exerting itself with a fixed purpose according to a predetermined plan. Of that plan, Revelation furnishes the moral scheme; and Science seeks to unravel the physical process. Divine actions are based on unerring knowledge as to the future; and creation, begun upon a plan, is sustained and governed by an all-embracing Providence. It is evident that if Foreknowledge be Infinite, if Power be Almighty, if Goodness be All-pervading, the Law or Rule will be so far perfect as to render any subsequent correction unnecessary— unless the action of free beings necessitates interference: allprovident infinite Wisdom neither requiring nor allowing break or irregularity. Scientific men are so sure that the universe is the work of Intelligence, to be understood by intelligence, that they make their study an honest endeavour to unravel its laws. They find, or seem to find, a reason and purpose, infinitely greater than human intelligence could project, weaving the weft and warp of history with idea. The initial passage from the Divine ideal to the actual being that moment of interference in which Nature begins to realise and express Supreme Thought. This thought embraces all worlds, all time, everything contained in them, and ensures the liberty and responsibility of intelligent creatures by providing that means for interference, and those agencies for readjustment, which the good and evil wills of free intelligent responsible beings render necessary.

Our conception, that natural uniformity is a chamber in which Divine Will displays variety, may be carried further. The unexpected conclusion has been drawn from certain recondite investigations that more than three dimensions in space are possible. In the career of the solar system we may be passing to regions in which space has not precisely the same proportions that we find here-where something will necessitate "a fourth dimension form of matter" for adaptation to the new locality. Nature, therefore, such as we know, possibly does not include all times, places, things.

Government of Free Creatures.

397 That which now concerns men, forming the natural part of their experiences and analogies, may be but a small portion of the Almighty's infinite dominions. When we are told of natural uniformity and invariability of law, we accept the statement, but confine it within the limits of our own experience for things which seem utterly impossible here may be natural in other experiences and analogies. Consequently, that pre-arrangement which provides for every eclipse of the sun and occultation of a star; and which the government of free intelligent and responsible creatures renders necessary; may weave into the world a loving, spiritual, elevating process, by which purity, now chiefly ideal even in the holiest of men, shall ultimately become actual in all. If so, Inspiration, Prophecy, Miracles, Spirit-power, are not less real parts of Nature than is material and mechanical order.

Such a scheme of government, the highest our minds can conceive, seems to be that of a great and good God. Free responsible creatures, forming an essential part in it, are the most perfect creations of the Infinite. Their freedom, happy existence, righteous and effective government, require that infinite wisdom and might weave the web of existence, and intersperse the Divine plan with a variety surpassing finite understanding.

The philosophical statement may be verified by experiment. Let us take matter as a beginning for examples of variety underlying "Natural Uniformity," and an illustration of the infinitely elastic medium encircling "Invariability of Law."

The various kinds of elements, though of a rigidly accurate mechanical base, geometrical figures lying at the bottom. of the whole, are adapted to an infinity of complicate and different purposes. The dense elements are pervaded by those less dense. All solid bodies are penetrated by moisture, or by the gases, or by the imponderables-light, heat, electricity, magnetism. Fluids are pervious by fluids, gases are traversed by gases. Sometimes the path is traced by expansion, by fusion, by active chemical affinities. At other times, the path is secret, and the manner of transit a mystery. The elements, being impelled, aided by electric and other

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