down to our comprehension, as the Spirit, and the manifes tation of the Divinity in Christ, are our means of rising to a knowledge of God in his holiness and love, and of man in his duty and destiny. Even nature, also, is radiant with God's love; for the earth's history evinces that man's welfare was regarded in the whole progress of creation; but Christ is the only expression of the infinite fulness of that love. In these two ways we gather strength, from the earth about us and God above, for the progress of the human soul.

While there is this kind of simplicity in the system of nature, its readings are more and more profound, as we pass beyond the more obvious phenomena, and rise, in our generalizations, to higher and higher principles: and just as we cannot, by searching, find out God, so we cannot fathom the depths of nature. There is an infinite range before us.

(3) To show that we do not claim too much for science, we will illustrate, briefly, its modes of research by reference to a few examples. It will appear that the methods employed are simple and truthful, being strictly readings from nature in accordance with the laws of mind; and that they reach onward towards truth instead of error: while pseudophilosophy looks upon nature with reverted eyes, sees only its own vain imaginings, and tends necessarily to the false in its views of nature.

In investigating heat, for example, it is observed that matter changes size with change of temperature. Selecting some substance for experiment, we apply our measures measures so improved by modern skill as to mark discrepancies of 100,000ths of an inch; we note the precise amount of expansion for given increments of temperature. Thus, after a while, we decipher one law by literally reading off the rates of expansion. Having made a scale of temperature, we next note, perhaps, the point of ebullition, or that temperature at which each substance passes to the state of vapor, and observe its constancy for each kind of liquid; and so read the facts that represent another law. The mind then makes comparison of the facts with one another and, as science advances, also with the chemical constitution of the

substances operated on, etc.; and so finds, as another lesson, a definite and simple relation between chemical constitution and the boiling points of compounds, a profounder law.

Again, we note the amount of heat absorbed when substances pass from a liquid state to that of a vapor, or from a solid to a liquid; find the amount 1000 deg. F. in the former case, and 142 deg. in the latter, and observe that this heat absorbed (or given out in the reverse changes) does not vary the temperature of the substances undergoing the change. In this way we ascertain another law of heat, called the law of latent heat.

We observe again, making our measurements with extreme care, that different substances expand unequally with the same addition of heat; and, therefore, that there are specific differences between substances. In this way we read off what is called the specific heat of those substances, and, by comparing, arrive at its general law. The chemical philosopher, with this law and its details in mind, observes that there is a close relation between these specific heats and the combining weights of elements, so exact that one is directly deducible from the other. Thus he opens a new chapter in the chemistry of nature; or, rather, nature throws a flood of new light into his mind.

When searching out the constitution of matter, he simply divides the compound into its constituents, by processes carefully studied, and then weighs those constituents, having balances that will weigh to thousandths of a grain. By weighing in one case after another, and setting down the amounts, he reads, again, a grand truth, that the elements and their compounds have definite combining weights. Then, pursuing it farther, the law of simple ratios, in the combinations of each element, is deciphered.

The investigation of nature is thus carried on by applying our weights and measures, as much so as in measuring a piece of cloth or weighing a pound of lead; and the generalizations, called laws, are the results of comparisons among these measurements. The mind rises, through natural induction, from specific to comprehensive truths.

Another example, bringing out a few facts in the history of chemistry, will exhibit the contrast between this style of philosophy and that egotistic method which puts its own conceptions in place of nature.

Chemistry made its earliest beginnings as a science in the last century. Then man first commenced to read nature on the subject. There had been mingling of acids and salts, and much torturing of nature to wrench out impossibilities, or obtain chance-results. But until then, there had hardly been one who was willing patiently to find out the letters of the alphabet and seek for word after word until a sentence was deciphered.

One question came up about the middle of that century: Why magnesia or lime was sometimes caustic and sometimes not? It was the subject of profound thought: mind went at it with vigor, and proved itself finite. Dr. Black took a given quantity, by weight, of the magnesia of the shops, not caustic, and heated it in a retort; it became caustic, as usual, from the action of heat. He then weighed it, and found it had lost weight, showing that something had gone from it as a consequence of the heating, and here was a probable cause suggested; something invisible, and therefore gaseous, had escaped. Thinking to obtain the gas, he tried an acid upon a portion of the 'original magnesia, and succeeded; he called it fixed air, as it was air or gas fixed in the solid state, a great truth for the age. This was the first knowledge of carbonic acid. Then, by simply collecting the gas, as it escaped during the heating of the magnesia, he obtained the same fixed air, and completed the chain of evidence. In this way a sure step was taken towards a knowledge of the cause of causticity, and real progress made in chemical science.

The change of the metal mercury to a black or red earthy substance in different processes, had long puzzled the alchemists, and was among the facts that suggested the idea of the transmutation of the metals. No mind among the many that had delved within their own precincts or indulged in hap-hazard observation, had solved the mystery. Priestley

took some of the red precipitate of mercury and exposed it to heat in a small flask, having made arrangements for collecting any vapor or gas that should pass off. Air, he says, was readily expelled, showing that the red mercury contained a gaseous ingredient in addition to mercury. He examined the air, found, to his surprise, "that a candle burned in it with a remarkably vigorous flame," and thus brought to light the gas oxygen. He obtained the same result with red lead and some other substances.

By similar searchings, Priestley made additional discoveries; experimented on the composition of the atmosphere and the respiration of plants; and, in this last research, first opened out to the world the grand fact, that vegetation, by contributing oxygen to the atmosphere, counterbalances the reverse influence of the respiration of animals. Bergman, Scheele, and others, added to these facts; and before the century closed, Lavoisier pointed out the true relations of oxygen to other elements, and its part in combustion, giving the science of chemistry its first distinct shape or system.

The world had had its millions and millions of minds for nearly fifty-eight hundred years, and conceptions respecting nature had followed conceptions; yet the efforts of human genius, in this line, had accomplished almost nothing. We see mind alone utterly impotent; but at once becoming mighty when taking nature (that is, God's display of himself in his works) as its guide and fountain of strength.

Thus, by readings of nature, chemistry continued its progress. Law rose into view beyond law. Electricity, magnetism, attraction, became terms representing systems of laws.

And it is clear, to the student of science, where research is still tending;-not to a demolition of these systems, but to simpler and wider enunciations, embracing the laws now known, as subordinate propositions or principles; NOT TO

PROFOUNDER AND PROFOUNDER ERROR, NOR FROM ONE SPECIOUS ERROR TO ANOTHER; BUT, BY AN ELIMINATION OF ERROR, TO HIGHER AND HIGHER TRUTHS.

(4) The contrast between the kind of philosophers illustrated, and the “elephant" breeders of old or modern times,

to

if

is sufficiently obvious. The world owes more curses curses were ever right-to these pseudo-philosophers than any other class of men that have existed. Yet we would be slow to blame, knowing the strong proclivity to such error in the human mind. Bergman, in the latter half of the last century, well observed: "A tendency to Cartesianism still exists; and, upon attentive consideration, it will not appear wonderful that the human mind should delight to indulge in this method; for, on the one hand, the way of experiment is expensive, troublesome, and tedious; all minds, therefore, are not capable of enduring it; many are without the proper instruments; others want the necessary dexterity: but the most universal defect is that of patience and perseverance, so that if the experiment does not at once succeed, it is abandoned in disgust. Man in his ordinary state seems, by nature, prone to indolence. On the other hand, the contemplative method favors the desire of knowledge. By pretending to unlock the secrets of nature with ease and expedition, it soothes the natural rage of explaining all things; and by supposing everything accessible to the human intellect, administers pleasing flattery to vanity and arrogance."

The chains thrown around the mind by this species of philosophy have been one of its most depressing means of bondage. At the time when the first aspirings of chemistry were about to make themselves apparent, in the seventeenth century, even a hundred years before Priestley wrote, a true theory of combustion was well nigh reached through the researches of Hooke and Mayow. But not long after, as the century drew towards its close, the hypothesis of phlogiston was ushered on the world by Beccher and Stahl of Germany. Offspring of aspiring mind, it haunted like a nightmare the opening science, blinding Priestley, Bergman, and others, to the true bearing of the facts they observed. And not till many an investigator had gone to nature for truth, and facts had been largely gathered in, to the help of the science, was the evil power destroyed and chemistry left free to expand.

The same disposition to give the fancy wings, is still ob