less, inert, imponderable, incapable of shape or figure. If matter ever was such a formless diffused substance, there must be a power by which energy, motion, weight, and other attributes, are conveyed. This hypothesis opposes the scientific dogma that matter is indestructible and eternal. For if matter can be so shorn of its attributes that it ceases to be that which we know of matter, why may not the process be continued to its annihilation? Think it out thus-Thought, rather the power of thought, may diminish in amount of being till it ceases to be known as thought. A sensation, too, can change its intensive and extensive quantity, be weaker or stronger. Are we not then bound to admit that thought, which is not known as thought, cannot properly be said to exist at all? If there is consciousness, but we are not conscious of it; and thought without the I, whose collective unity makes it personally possible; can we not go a little further and arrive at that stage in which for us, as thinking beings, they are nothing? Admitted, that matter is indestructible by any power in man or in nature; that, do what we will, two attributes of matter (the relation to moving force, and the power of attracting and being attracted by other matter) are always the same; do the two permanent properties constitute the essence of matter? Certainly not they are merely relations between matter and something else. Then, if we ask "What is matter?" the reply comes-"No matter at all.” The permanent substance is something besides and independent of our conscious states; something, probably the genus, of which matter may be one species. Hence, as we believe that there is real substantial existence, life,

energy, intelligence, independent of all phenomena; it seems right on scientific and philosophical principles to maintain that the matter, the energy, the life, the intelligence of the universe, are the externalization of eternal substance, energy, life, intelligence; or, as Frederick Pollock states, p. 108, Spinoza meant "The modes or creatures which immediately depend on God, or are created by Him" are "motions in matter, and understanding in the thinking thing."

We will put nature, as it now exists, into the witness-box :

We find formative power everywhere. Molecules attract and repel one another, at certain points or poles, and in definite directions. These forms and directions are complex, and the complexity partly explains the differences of crystalline and all other structures. The architecture of a living grain of corn somewhat resembles, but is infinitely more complex than, the architecture of a crystal. The crystal adds to its surface in order to increase in size. Blocks of crystal deposit themselves, and we have little pyramids with terrace above terrace from base to apex; the operation seems not wholly mechanical, but as if an invisible population under an unseen master, gave position to the atomic blocks. The architecture of the plant exceeds the architecture of the crystal. The plant, as regards the cells, makes increase within; and forces are active at the root, the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear. By far more subtle remote formative acts, including chemical vital mental expenditure, are animal organisms constructed. This wonderful result is an externalization of permanent energy and intelligence, and we rightly use

the words of S. Augustine, “It is not with the world as with an edifice; which, once raised, continues to stand, though the architect does no more to it. If God ceased to govern the world, it would not continue to exist for a single instant: Divine Providence is a daily creation" ("Commentary on Genesis").

Of the inner quality or qualities enabling matter thus to attract matter, move, form crystals, effect growth, manifest intelligence, we know nothing more than the results. The various manifestations are called by different names, but the same energy which pulls an apple from the tree, holds together all worlds, "moulds a planet and rounds a tear." A modification of this power, in connection with energies, subtle, vital, intellectual, constructs the plant and builds the animal; is the source of our emotions, the means by which we think, and reveals our thought and emotion. We endeavour to know the mystery by deepest, furthestreaching investigation, but within every depth is a greater deep; and by no possible means can the most intellectual divine, or the profoundest physicist, state where the material ends or the spiritual begins. We have to do with a vast machinery composed of inert senseless, extended, solid, movable substance, existing without a mind, or reason, of its own; a machinery within which are sensational, emotional, and other processes, too subtle to be apprehended by sense, or fully represented by imagination. This machinery, associated by various laws in various groups, is framed of solid, liquid, gaseous bodies, and located in space. From among the infinite number of these, one of special importance to himself, his own organism, is allotted to

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every man. The peculiarity of which is that it becomes the channel of communication between the material world and himself as a thinking being. His intelligence so constructed, is instructed and moulded by the definite order of the universe. He learns the nature and constitution of that order, makes it his business to order himself by it, fashion his life, and arrange his destiny. Thus human mind is a finite expression of definite order in the universe: a microcosm, and the world a macrocosm, of the Supreme Intelligence.

Could we see, as Newton thought might some time be possible, the ultimate atoms, and do as the alchymist in "Hudibras "

or were we able to behold the waves of light æther, know their size, form, force; trace atom to molecule; find latent in the amorphous drop of water all the marvels of crystalline force; examine the breaking up by the sunbeam of the carbonic acid of the atmosphere within the plant into elements of growth; and see the same dynamic power brought differently into display for construction and repair of animal bodies; these outward and inner visible phenomena would be but counters of the intellect not revealers of the mystery. They would demonstrate the interdependence and harmony of all things; but we could not detect nor precisely explain the essential difference between volitional and mechanical operation; for the whole world, even where it seems dead, is like a living creature praising God.

Atoms and molecules march in tune; melodious strains awake in crystalline force; the pitch is changed for that symphony in which the trees clap their hands; then come a blending and variety, richer and higher, in cattle of the thousand hills, culminating in the grand oratorio and outpoured praise of men. These concep

tions, or several sets of experiences, of something real that transcends consciousness, yet comes within our consciousness; of something absolutely independent of us, yet of which we are made a part; of something, amidst changing circumstances, itself unchanging, living, intelligent; lead the devout philosophic mind to believe in a Creator who constructs our minds so that we may believe in Him as that Wonderful, in comparison with whose wisdom all the splendour of worlds is but a sparklet of intelligence. A merely secular technical man does not accept this guidance. Though there is not a single particle of matter which he can either conceive or picture as it really exists; and to know the Cause and essence of nature he must, by means of nature, go beyond nature; he adopts, instead of a Creator, that senseless notion of some self-devised process by which right-thinking intelligences tend to multiply and wrong-thinking to die out. It will confirm the philosophic mind in devotion, and serve to raise the secular man, if we indicate a mode of thought in which, by means of successive reaches, we obtain glimpse of a Being who, separate from ourselves, is yet the cause of all those states and changes of which we are conscious; glimpse of Him who, in essence unknowable, becomes knowable by entering, through creation, into determinate relations with the known and the knowable.