awe, such a faith, such unutterable yearnings, such an agony of grief, such a rapture of hope, as may alone suffice for proof that we are something more than, something other than, dust.

So long," says Ruskin, "as you have that fire of the heart within you, and know the reality of it, you need be under no alarm as to its chemical or mechanical analysis. The philosophers are very humorous in their ecstasy of hope about it, but the real interest of their discoveries in this direction is very small to human kind. It is quite true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch vibrates too; but the ditch hears nothing for all that, and my hearing is still to me as blessed a mystery as ever, and the interval between the ditch and me quite as great. If the trembling sound in my ears was once of the marriage bells which began my happiness, and is now of the passing bell which ends it, the difference between those two sounds to me cannot be counted by the number of concussions. There have been some curious speculations lately as to the changes by brain-waves.

conveyance of mental

What does it matter

how it is conveyed? The consciousness itself is not a wave: it may be accompanied here and

there by any quantity of quivers and shakes of anything you can find in the universe that is shakeable. What is that to me? My friend is dead, and my-according to modern views vibratory sorrow is not one whit less or less mysterious than my old quiet one."

The attempt, then, to ignore the supernatural is most unphilosophical. But we are so terribly afraid nowadays of being over-credulous. We should remember, however, that believing too much is not the only sign of a weak mind. We may show our mental incapacity by believing too little. He who regards a human being as a mere mass of nerves, he who maintains that there is nothing in Nature but a mechanical combination of atoms,—must be a very superficial thinker. The chemical analysis of a tear into oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine and sodium is not a complete explanation of the mystery of grief: nor is the supernaturalness of Nature disproved by the fact that it cannot be depicted upon the retina of the eye. It may be discovered by the mind: it may be felt by the heart. Let us search diligently until we find it.

192

The Naturalness of the Supernatural.

IT

"The Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”—JAMES i. 17.

T is interesting and suggestive to notice how, with the progress of science, our notions of the universe have been revolutionised. Once men believed in the universal reign of caprice; now they believe in the universal reign of law. Formerly earth, air and sea were peopled with a host of imaginary beings, and we were supposed to be at the mercy of their changeable whims or of their unchangeable vindictiveness. It was thought that any one of them, if strong enough to prevail over the rest, might alter the course of nature at a moment's notice. Religion, therefore, consisted in appeasing these divinities, so powerful for evil, with barley, wine or blood. In the darkness of an eclipse, in the rolling peal of the thunder, in a volcanic eruption, in the devastation of a plague, and even in an unusual

state of the weather, men saw, as they thought, the capricious interference of these supernatural But observation and reflection have

powers.
made us wiser.

investigated, the
brought to light.

The more that nature has been more has her uniformity been Resemblances have been dis

covered even where they were least expected; as, for example, in the similarity of structure belonging to animals of different species, which at first sight appeared to be altogether diverse. And not only has nature been discovered to be uniform in our own time and in our own world, but the most remote spheres and ages, regarding which we are able to gather any information, have been found to be subject to the same laws which obtain here and now. We know, beyond a doubt, that the force which causes a leaf to fall to the ground is concerned in the revolutions of the most distant star; that "the law which moulds a planet rounds a tear;" and that the light of to-day has exactly the same properties as the light of the pre-Adamite world. So certain are we of the universality of law, that` we know apparent exceptions cannot be real exceptions. In fact, a seeming violation of law has not unfrequently led to a fresh confirmation of its absolute inviolability. For example, the fact

N

that Uranus did not move in exact accordance with astronomical calculations suggested that there must exist somewhere a disturbing cause. The amount of divergence from its calculated path pointed to the exact spot where that disturbing cause must be looked for; and there, accordingly, what is now called Neptune was discovered. Even in cases where, owing to the complexity of the problem, our knowledge is less exact, even where we have not been able to ascertain the precise manner in which certain results are produced, we yet feel absolutely sure that these results are brought about by unchanging and unchangeable laws. Epidemics of cholera and plague, for instance, which our ancestors attributed to the anger of heaven-we believe to be due to a violation of the laws of health; we no longer connect them with a sudden interference of Providence, but we set about tracing them to the impurity of our pumps, or to some other equally simple and natural cause. And similarly in regard to the weather, though it is the very type of fickleness, and though our knowledge of the laws which govern it is exceedingly imperfect, yet there is not an educated man in the world to-day who does not feel certain that rain and drought, heat and cold,