ure to do the work to which we put them is undeniable. But there are what anatomists and botanists call "functionless organs," which, in the animals and plants which possess them, have no apparent uses, and which speak to us rather of a distant past, or perhaps of a more distant future, than of the present. And while we may reasonably strive to discover, also, the purpose of their present occurrence, a modest distrust of our own limited powers should make us cautious where we are dealing with infinite wisdom and power.

It was a laughable instance of misapprehension when a child admired the wisdom of Providence in causing large rivers to flow past great cities-for we all see that the cities were subsequent to the rivers, and man only took advantage of what he found created to his hand. It might be to little more purpose for you to argue that God made rivers

to facilitate internal commerce and communication between nations. It is enough for us that we find them useful for this important end. To recur to the case of water, of which I spoke in the last chapter: we see clearly enough that on the fact that water expands in freezing, contrary to a very general though not universal law, depends to a large extent the habitableness of our planet. I think we may reasonably admire the wisdom of the Creator

in giving this somewhat exceptional law to water; and we may even suppose that he took this way, out of a number which he might have used, to make the earth habitable and pleasant to such creatures as it contains.

But if, now, a plumber should come in and assume that water had been caused to expand in freezing in order that he might have the profit of mending bursted water-pipes, you would justly regard this as a very silly deduction.

It is possible and probable that the Creator had not one but many purposes in view in any one of the laws he established; that of these purposes some were present, others remote; some evident, others recondite; and that while the attempt to define for ourselves his designs in every phenomenon we observe about us is a tempting intellectual exercise, it must be, for the most part, sterile of results: because a finite mind strives in vain to penetrate the secrets of his infinite intelligence.

When we come to ask wHY, we run our heads at once against so many impenetrable mysteries that the wisest draw back with awe, and wait patiently for the clearer insight we may hope for in another life, where we shall be disencumbered of our bodies -those organs which we may there discover to have been to us more of a hinderance than even a help

to knowledge. In these matters also, as Paul finely says, "Here we see as in a glass darkly, but there face to face"-here we see dimly, as the reflection in a mirror of an object lying behind us; but there by direct vision.

Here we see more and more of the wonderful way in which things go on-but, so far, we have not got even the faintest glimpse of how things began. We discover some of the laws, as we call them, in obedience to which the universe became and remains an orderly and harmoniously working machine; but we know absolutely nothing of wHY these laws are as they are, much less why they are not otherwise.

These limitations of our knowledge, which yet do not exclude us from knowing that there is an infinite field of investigation before us, are justly held to give us a promise of continued existence-to make a life beyond the grave more probable than that we should perish with our bodies. If we could know. all here, we might reasonably apprehend that this life, thus filled and rounded, was all that remains to us. As for the lower animals, which fulfil all their functions in this life, no other is necessary: so it night be with us higher beings, if we also, in this life, could consciously fulfil all our functions, and complete our possibilities.

6

IX.

MORAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL LAWS.

WE speak of moral as well as physical laws; but while all created things are alike and peremptorily subject to those general rules which we call physical laws, man is the only creature who is subject to moral laws. The beasts have neither morality nor immorality; they simply follow their impulses. It would be as absurd to talk of an immoral horse or lion as of an immoral oak or elm. To man alone is given the choice between good and evil. We speak sometimes, to be sure, of a thieving cat, or dog, or raven, but we do not apply the term in the same sense as to a man; nor do we hold an animal to the same responsibility.

Moral laws appear for us to have come in with the creation of man. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Bible tells us, grew in Paradise; it appeared there simultaneously with the first human pair. Whether you take this Bible statement literally, or regard it as a picturesque and poetical statement, it is nevertheless true-just as

true as that other Bible generalization, that "in the sweat of his face shall man eat his bread," or as hundreds of equally striking and deeply significant truths with which it is filled.

You consider a physical or natural law established when all the phenomena which it should affect are duly affected by it, so far as our experiments can develop this fact. We hold the law of gravitation to be established, for instance, because research and experiment have shown that the smallest stone is no no more nor less subject to it than the largest planet.

But, setting aside the moral law as revealed and enforced upon us in the Scriptures, how are you to determine what is right and what is wrong? Murder, for instance, the first crime, the first offence against the moral law of the commission of which we have any account-murder, you say, is undoubtedly wrong. But how can you prove this? Consider for a moment. Why should you not kill a person who stands in the way of the object you have at heart-of your success in some plan of life, your rival in love, or in ambition, or in business, and likely to be your successful rival? A single life stands between you and your most cherished object in lifewhy not destroy it? why not kill the man-poison him secretly, let us say—and thus attain your object? Leave out of view, please, the dread of discovery,