human intellect, shrouds many exquisitely beautiful processes, we see enough to constrain us to assert a community of structural arrangement, and to accept the doctrine of an all-pervading unity in life fabrics.

Permeating all these, are heat, light, electricity, magnetism, as correlated forces; and the discovery that these different physical forces are mutually convertible,—that they can pass into one another, or, in other words, that all force is the same force, has placed in an entirely new light the unity of the globe. These forces are so simple, yet so powerful in their combinations, and are so universal in their diffusion, as they connect the inorganic and organic fabrics, that the doctrine of unity is rising with a magnificence which surpasses that even of endless worlds in harmony, because they bear us on more directly to the mind of God. "And even if we cannot certainly identify force in all its forms with the direct energies of one omnipresent and all-pervading Will, it is, at least, in the highest degree unphilosophical to assume the contrary, to speak or to think as if the forces of nature were either independent of or even separate from the Creator's power." 1

While admitting the correlation of forces, and, to a certain extent, that matter and force are inseparable, and while conceding that they have some intimate connexion with the animal frame, we deny that they either sustain or subordinate mental force, or that they are "the all" of spiritual life. There are facts in mental history which a purely materialistic philosophy can never explain. One of these is a belief in the immortality of the soul. Another is that we are free

agents, and are morally responsible for our actions; and, intimately connected with these two, is the idea of a God

1 "Reign of Law," by the Duke of Argyll, p. 122.

"1

almighty and omnipresent. Matter and force, however inseparable, cannot in their very nature produce such results as these. Vital force is essentially different from purely physical force. "It is one thing to admit that the vital and active energies of the living being are carried on by means of the forces of inorganic nature, and another thing to assert that any mere combination of these forces produces life." Vital properties are superadded; they are not permanent. They are removed at death, and do not reappear. "The material properties belong to the matter, whether living or dead," says Dr. Beale, "but where are the vital properties in the dead material? If physicists and chemists would restore to life that which is dead, we should all believe in the doctrine they teach."2 As we are not discussing materialism, but tracing unity, we follow its conclusions no further. We accept almost all that it teaches physiologically in regard to the connexions of the organic and inorganic, and the exposition which it indirectly gives of the unity of our globe and of all its life forms; but we refuse to stop here, as there is a psychological or spiritual sphere in which the phenomena of matter and force are comparatively subordinate. It has its own laws, and recognises a higher than a materialistic government. We rise from the lower unity to that which is wider, more lasting, and more sublime. In the intimate connexion of the material with the intellectual and spiritual, -of the outer world with the "world within,”—there is a unity of profounder interest than that which the physical universe alone exhibits, and that interest is intensified when we separate ourselves altogether from what is external, and

1 See a very able article in the "British and Foreign Evangelical Review," July, 1872, by Professor J. R. Leebody.

2 "Protoplasm; or Life, Matter, and Mind,” p. 27.

begin to expatiate with freedom in the domain of the invisible. As we ascend from the lowest instinct in animals to reason and faith in man, we infer the legitimacy of still higher advances. We cannot stop with man as the terminating link in the series of rational and accountable intelligences; we cannot admit that his horizon is the limit of moral agency in the universe. Analogy, as our guide, gives to us an upward impulse which we cannot check without doing violence alike to the expositions of science and Scripture. What is dim to reason, Revelation makes distinct. The Bible guides us with steady step into the invisible, and it describes existences in it with as much historical definiteness as when it places before us facts which lie within the easy apprehension of the senses. "Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" are described as distinct representatives of spiritual intelligences, or celestial dignities, or the higher and highest essences of the universe: order reigns there, unity prevails, as with one mind they obey God. A system of beings is revealed to us, vast, mysterious, yet harmonious, of which science can take no cognisance. The sun is not its centre, nor is Alcyone. The Pleiades do not reflect its splendour, nor can astronomers define its outline or estimate its glories. Its "thrones and dominions" rise illimitably until they approach the omnipotent Adonai, in whom and by whom and for whom they all consist.

When astronomy, geology, chemistry, physiology, and other correlated sciences, are thus associated with what the Bible reveals in the unseen, we may safely rest in the light of that Word which reveals a glorious Being who sees the end from the beginning, and who has in matchless wisdom first instituted the design to which every fact, and law, and event have been throughout conformed, and has given to all His works a unity consonant with that of His own attributes.

CHAPTER V.

Scripture Allusions coincident with Facts in Natural Science.

"The Bible frequently makes allusions to the laws of nature, their operations, and effects. But such allusions are often so wrapped in the folds of the peculiar and graceful drapery with which its language is occasionally clothed, that the meaning, though peeping out from its thin covering all the while, yet lies in some sense concealed until the lights and revelations of science are thrown upon it; then it bursts out and strikes us with exquisite force and beauty."-Lieutenant Maury.

TH

HERE are allusions in the Bible, written centuries before astronomy had given a glimpse of the structure of the universe, or geology had revealed the evolutions of the globe, or chemistry its constituent elements, which have only of late become intelligible and been recognised as perfectly exact. The coincidences of Bible statements with facts in natural science are so remarkable, and comparatively so numerous, that when combined they constitute a powerful argument for the reliableness of the whole book. Although the Bible does not teach science, it cannot be admitted to contradict its discoveries. The coincidence may in some instances seem to be remote or fanciful, but it is not on that account to be rejected. New discoveries may remove doubt and reveal long-hidden connexions.

We have already noticed (1) the long-mysterious questions in the Book of Job, regarding the Pleiades, as enriched with unexpected lustre by the light of modern astronomy; and (2) the statements in the first chapter of Genesis regarding the distinctive facts in the natural history of "the grass," "the herb," and "the fruit tree," as reaching that which

botanists have made the basis of a truly scientific classification. Without further adverting to these allusions, we submit the following coincidences:

3. "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." This harmonises fully with what is known of the processes of evaporation to which the clouds are subject as they float above us,-lakes of water in the azure vault. The firmament sustains the waters resting on it in scattered clouds, and separates them from those resting on the surface of the earth. Take, in connexion with this, what Solomon has written," 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," and you may fairly press the question, Can any brief description more exactly set forth what has been ascertained as to the settled course of evaporation?

4. The passage in Ecclesiastes regarding the separation of particles of water from the rivers and the sea, has an intensified significance when placed beside that other statement in Job regarding the weight of the atmosphere; "For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.' This reference to the "weight of the winds," dimly indicates that simple yet beautiful arrangement in the atmosphere which the experiments of natural philosophy have made known, and of which the barometer is a simple illustration. In the still atmosphere there slumbers amazing power; it has a weight, or substantiality, by which it upholds the clouds or the waters; and there is in its

1 Genesis i. 6,7.

2 Ecclesiastes i. 7.

3 Job xxviii. 24, 25.