mising in casting away "to the moles and to the bats" the idols we set up within the shrines of our affections, as it was necessary for them to be who were brought from the darkness of idolatry, in casting away "their dumb idols, and turning to the living God." This is absolutely essential for our welfare here, as well as for our welfare hereafter. For we shall find, by an inevitable law-a law resulting from the operation of God's power in every instance, as, indeed, all laws are if we will worship that which he hath commanded not to be worshiped instead of himself, who is alone worthy to be the object of our supreme love and adoration, he will make those very objects the means of our spiritual destruction, and cause us "to be ashamed of the oaks which we have planted, and be confounded for the gardens that we have chosen." For thus saith the Lord, by his servant Isaiah-"They shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water."

CHAPTER III.

LIGHT.

ITS NATURE AND VELOCITY-REFLECTIONS ON ITS TRANSMISSION-OBJECTS VISIBLE ONLY THROUGH ITS RAYS-ITS UNIVERSALITY, AN ARGUMENT FOR THE DIVINE OMNISCIENCE-OMNIPRESENCE AND OMNISCIENCE SHOWN TO BE NECESSARILY CONNECTED-LIGHT A MORAL MICROSCOPE-LIGHT EMBLEMATIC OF TRUTHITS IDENTITY OR INTIMATE CONNECTION WITH CALORIC, ELECTRICITY, AND GALVANISM, AND MAGNETISM, SHOWN BY RECENT EXPERIMENTS-THE ATMOSPHERE -LAWS OF SOUND-SHOWN TO SUPPORT THE SAME CONCLUSIONS WITH THOSE OF LIGHT-TENDENCY OF SUCH DOCTRINE-AURORA BOREALIS-CONCLUSION.

THE object of the preceding two chapters has been to show that the Book of Nature rightly read, and the Book of Revelation, give us the same history. That God tells us the same things, whether he speaks to us by means of the stars above, or the earth beneath, or by the voice of inspiration; that truth is at all times one and the same —that it cannot, under one circumstance, reveal to us one aspect, and under another circumstance another aspect of affairs, but that it must always tend in the same direction, and always be concentrated in the same point. The object of the present chapter is somewhat more profound. We shall have now to show that God's works, rightly contemplated, are capable of throwing a light upon his own nature and attributes-that we may, by duly studying therein, come to a somewhat competent knowledge of his nature who made them that the most wondrous of his attributes, and the most glorious of his perfections, are stamped on the works of his creation; and that though we cannot "by searching find out God," yet we may learn sufficient concerning him, by examining the records of his power, to fill our minds with awe at his perfections, and with love for his wondrous beneficence.

We may deduce much knowledge of the wisdom and the love of

God, from observing the boundless provision which he has made for us. We see how he has studded the world in which we live with good; how he has provided for every want of humanity, and how he has given us not only the necessaries of life, but "all things richly to enjoy❞—all things which may tend to make this life a foretaste of the better life to come. But by means of those facts which are connected with the higher parts of philosophy, we are able to ascertain not this only, but also some glimmering of information as to his own inner nature; and we shall now endeavor to show how far this nature is revealed to us by the laws of his creation, and especially by this one circumstance, that "God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

In order to do this, we will take a brief review of what we know concerning it. We shall not now investigate anything connected with the nature of light, save its power of making known to us that which exists. We shall not speak of it under any other phase, than that of being the fluid whereby all things become visible. Under these circumstances, then, we shall regard first, the philosophy of its transmission. We know that all things are visible, simply by the rays of light. We say transmission, because the term is more easy to be understood than any other that we could use-not thereby attempting to invalidate that which now we know to be true, namely, the undulatory theory of light. But still, using the common form of speech, on account of its more easy and intelligible character, we say that all things become visible to us by means of the rays of light which are transmitted from them to us; that the sun in the heavens is visible to us by reason of those rays which make an impression upon our senses, and which cause us to know that the sun there exists. The rays of light which pass to us from the moon and from the stars, make known to us the existence of those bodies; and it matters not for our purpose, whether the light radiate from any inherent quality of the body itself, or whether it be light reflected therefrom. The light of the sun comes to us, because the sun is a luminous body; the light of the moon comes to us, because her light is reflected from the sun; the light of the stars comes to us, because, according to all that we know of them, they are luminous bodies; the light of the planets comes to us, because the light is reflected

We see objects

from them, being originally the light of the sun. at a distance on the earth, by reason of the sun's rays, or the rays of the moon, or the rays of any other luminous body, falling upon them; and we have no other means of ascertaining their existence than by the light passing from them to us.

Now it is plain that, as this is the case, it is a matter of consequence in any philosophical investigations that we should know at what rate these rays of light travel; for light comes from the sun to us, and we only know of the very existence of the sun by the transmission of its rays. Then it follows that some space of time, whether long or short, must be occupied by their transmission, and some space of time, therefore, must be occupied in conveying to us the knowledge that there the sun exists, that there the moon occupies her place in the heavens, that there the stars are shining above us, or that at any given distance, or in any given spot, a visible object exists. Now we have been able to discover at what rate light is thus transmitted; and wonderful as the velocity may appear, yet it is a rate which has been ascertained by the most rigid experiments, and therefore, which cannot admit of the slightest doubt. We know, then, that a ray of light passes at the rate of a hundred and ninetyfive thousands of miles in a second of time: so that, supposing the distance of the earth from the sun to be ninety-five millions of miles, we may say that a ray of light transmitted from the sun to the earth will оссиру about eight minutes in its transmission.

The first thought, then, which fills our minds is that of simple wonder. We are struck with marvel that light, or that anybody whatever, however impalpable and aërial may be its form, can pass through space at so rapid a rate. But when we come to consider the question further, we find far graver subjects for our wonder, far more important, causes for our interest. And, first, we observe, then, that as the rays of light are transmitted at one uniform rate throughout space, it will follow that the more distant bodies will take a greater proportion of time in transmitting to us the rays of light, and making visible, therefore, to us their existence. Let us consider for a moment. If it take eight minutes for a single ray of light to pass from the sun to the earth, it will follow that eight minutes will elapse before we can on the earth become aware by our

sight of the existence of the sun. Let us carry this out a little further, and suppose that there is a star at so great a distance from the earth that instead of taking eight minutes, it will take a thousand years for the transmission of the rays of light from that star to the earth; we shall then find that it will take a thousand years before we can be aware of the existence of that star. Again, to pursue the same thought another step, and noting what are the actual discoveries which have been made, we shall see that there are nebulæ so far off that, according to the computation which we have been enabled to make concerning them, it would take at least two hundred millions of years before their light could be transmitted to the earth, and that consequently it must have occupied two hundred millions of years before, in this identical spot of the creation in which we now are, their light can have become visible.

Now these are not things which are matters of mere conjecture; they are matters of mathematical proof; and consequently as absolutely certain as that two and two make four, or any other fact, either geometrical or arithmetical, which may be proved by the action of the same rules. And we are not to stop at mere wonder in these cases, but we are to consider whereto they tend to what conclusions they lead us. And the first conclusion, then, will be that there are parts of the creation which have been in existence for at least two hundred millions of years and more, inasmuch as that time must have elapsed before their rays could have reached that part of the creation in which our own world has its place. Here, then, at once we find, that however we interpret the words in the first book of Moses, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," we are not at all events to imagine that six thousand years ago God made all things by "the Word of his power," but that at distances of time inconceivably vast, of which we can form no sufficient idea, and of which the words that we use are rather symbols for practical use, than means to give us any adequate notion-the work of creation was already in operation, and had been probably for spaces of time as vast before.

This, then, is one aspect under which we regard the enormous distances which astronomy, and more especially by means of the laws of light, reveals to us. But it does not stop here. These are topics into