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Variety in Matter.

375 of the sun, and occultation of a star; and which the government of free, intelligent, and responsible creatures renders necessary; may weave into the world a loving, spiritual, elevating process by which purity, now chiefly ideal even in the holiest of men, shall ultimately become actual in all. If so, Inspiration, Prophecy, Miracles, Spirit-power, are as much parts of nature as is material and mechanical order.

Such a scheme of government, being the highest our minds can conceive, seems to be that of a great and good God. If, further, we think that free responsible creatures, forming an essential part in such government, are the most perfect creations of the Infinite, it becomes absolutely requisite for their happy existence, righteous and effective government, that freedom shall weave the web of existence and the Divine plan with a wonderful variety surpassing finite understanding. We think the philosophical argument may be verified by experiment. As a beginning for examples of variety underlying "Natural Uniformity," and an illustration of the infinitely elastic medium enclosing what is called "Invariability of Law," take Matter.

It escapes not careful notice that the sixty-four various kinds of elements, though of a rigidly accurate mechanical base, geometrical figures lying at the bottom of the whole, are adapted to an infinity of complicate and various purposes. The dense elements are pervaded by those less dense. All solid bodies are penetrated by moisture, or by the gases, or by the imponderables-light, heat, electricity, magnetism. Fluids are pervious by fluids, and gases are traversed by gases. Sometimes the path is traced by expansion, by fusion, by active chemical affinities. At other times, the path is secret, and the manner of transit remains a mystery. The elements, being impelled, aided by electric and other forces, produce, what has been called, "Electro-vegetation;" and advance to the mysteries of vegetable and animal life. Hence, the world, as a material organism, might be reduced into sixtyfour kinds of elementary atoms; and possibly, these atoms, though we cannot convert any one into another, were once in one formless diffused substance.

Now we arrive at a startling result. So far from the ele

ments being somewhat inadequate, or all used in the many singularly contrasted substances and results exhibited in nature; only a few are largely present. As a mass, the outside contents of the globe consist of few elements: silicon, iron, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, and carbon. Animals and vegetables are varieties, chiefly of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen. The broad ocean, throughout its vast bulk, is narrowed to two elements-oxygen and hydrogen; other substances are indeed a small part of it. Considering that the human body, progressing to suitable form and fit use for the genius of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, and the piety of Wicklyff, is resolvable into a few elementary atoms; we discern that the band encircling natural uniformity and invariability of law is infinitely elastic.

It might be thought that the mathematical basis of the forms of matter necessitated such invariable procedure, and production of like by like, that the whole future could be calculated and formulated: whereas, Mr Babbage, in his ninth "Bridgewater Treatise," shows that we have no right to expect such invariable and fixed process. Deviations of the most startling character may co-exist with controlling law. A calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,001, then leaps; and, instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002, "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000." The law thus changes :

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"For a hundred or even for a thousand terms, they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find this law fails of the 2762nd term. If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers, called

Divine Intervention.

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triangular, because a number of points agreeing with their term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus

I, 3, 6, 10. This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms; and this too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which appear at different intervals."

It is evident that all calculations, beyond what serve for the immediate guidance of our life and practical reliance on nature's uniformity, may be and probably are subordinated to some higher law which, at various seasons, interrupts and changes it. How then can any philosopher assert—“ There never has been, and never will be any intervention of natural laws? There must have been an intervention, and a series of crises, on the formation of elements out of primeval atoms; grouping and giving them powers as solids, fluids, gases; combining the inorganic; organizing it; doing that which no chemist can-vitalise it; and building up the world in harmonious beauty. The development, whether by an almost infinitely extended process, or sharp, abrupt, absolute, is inexplicable, except by intervention of an Inscrutable power. During the historical era ordinary observation might discern no change, the procedure with which we are acquainted may have been uniform; but, in ages preceding, we know not what happened; nor can we, with certainty, forecast the future; the invisible and unknown are indisputably great factors in the universe. The smallest particles of any substance may belong to a vast number of systems, communicating with one another, and in a manner wholly incomprehensible.

We may think of it in various ways.

Well nigh infinite change has been wrought since our planet began. No part of the surface is now, or ever has been at rest. There is a constant change in life, solar radiance is ever gaining or losing in intensity, the density and moisture of the air are continually increasing or diminishing. Take the molecular theory of gases. The particles fly about with very great velocity,

1 "Conflict Between Religion and Science:" Professor Draper.

impinge upon one another, and against the sides of the containing vessel, thus producing what we call the pressure of the gas. At ordinary pressure, every particle has to move a distance, say, of something like sooth or soooooth part of an inch, on the average, before it comes in contact with another particle, and is sent on a new path. The pressure may be decreased by partially exhausting the gas, so that there are fewer particles in a given space; or, by compression bringing them so much closer that, on the average, the particles are not more, say, than 100th part of an inch asunder. The average square of the velocity of the particles corresponds with the energy of heat in the gas or its temperature. When a gas is so far condensed as to approach the liquid state, its particles are scarcely ever free from collisions; in the solid state its particles are, practically, in a permanent state of collision one with another.1

We obtain by mathematical methods a faint conception of the complexity and mystery; for example: in a mass of hydrogen, at ordinary temperature and pressure, every particle has on an average 17,700,000,000 collisions per second with other particles; in every second its course is wholly changed 17,700,000,000 times; and the particle itself moves at the rate of 70 miles in a minute. In air the number of collisions is about half, and the velocity about one-fourth of that in hydrogen.2 In a cubic inch of air, in the ordinary state of the atmosphere, the number of particles is approximately about 3 x 102°, that is 3 with 20 cyphers after it; and the effective diameter of a particle is not very different from one 250,000,000th part of an inch.3

Careering amidst the tumult and storm, are minute living creatures hustling one another, or keeping out of one another's way, feeding, and propagating themselves; in every room, not myriads only, billions exist.

We are told that distilled water is homogeneous, and a germ of life is absolutely structureless, because the microscope fails to distinguish difference or structure; but, in reality,

2

J "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 245-247: P. G. Tait.

"Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 324: P. G. Tait.

3 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 317: P. G. Tait.

Leaf-Arrangement.

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even the microscope is blind as to these things. What shall we say then to skyey particles, so infinitesimally small that the minutest "vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic field are as behemoth and leviathan?" The diamond and amethyst have structure, but no structure can be detected; particles of water, changed so as to be diamagnetically polar, twist a ray of light, yet present nothing for the microscope to reveal; and germs of life, which seem absolutely simple, possess a complexity transcending our comprehension as it surpasses our powers of observation.

We hardly have patience with men who, knowing the world to be thus mysterious and utterly incomprehensible, full of things baffling and transcending human intelligence at every step, tell us-"there never has been any Divine Interference." Why Divine Interference is continual-matter, life, intelligence, are as a garment of the Living God: shall He not move in it, lay it aside, or change it, as He sees fit? Commonest things manifest incomprehensible peculiarities. Take a cold highly polished plate of metal, place a wafer on it, breathe on the wafer when the moisture has disappeared, and the wafer been thrown off, no trace of wafer or breath will be seen; but breathe again, and a spectral image of the wafer comes to view. Tried again, after many months, the shadowy form once more emerges-a symbol of life and resurrection from the dead.

The farina of flowers appears to the naked eye like simple dust, but when magnified it is seen to be finely constructed and of great variety, according to the character of the plant. Leaves are among the most delicate and gorgeous forms of nature. The leaf of the Box is supposed to have on its two sides 344,180 pores, and the back of a Rose-leaf is diapered as with silver. "The Crowberry of our moors (Empetrum nigrum) habitually exhibits a peculiar mode of variation in the arrangement of its leaves on different parts of the same twig. Out of fifty Crowberry twigs, taken at random, only four (and these fragments) preserved the same arrangement throughout. In the remaining forty-six the leaf arrangement was found to undergo a progressive change in ascending from the base of the twig to the summit

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