This study of varieties may well end in leading heart and mind to some, though faint, conception of the great changes and catastrophes yet to come. At every transformation of heat-energy into work a large portion is degraded, and only a small portion put into real work. It is easy to transform all mechanical or useful energy into heat, but only a small part of this heat-energy can be turned back into work. Every change degrades or dissipates the heat it becomes less and less available for further transformation nevertheless, energy whilst dissipating may be available; thus the earth cools and loses its potential energy by radiation into space, but the rocks contract and lay up a store of available kinetic energy and curve the surface of the earth. Heat is really the communist of the universe, tending for ever and ever to equalisation, and will, no doubt, bring our system to an end. The sun, supporting us with heat and energy, is becoming older and colder. By something analogous to æthereal friction, the earth and planets are spirally drawn nearer, and will be engulfed in his mass. By that collision, energy will be converted into heat, and the power of the sun have partial and temporary restoration to do more work; but this process also will come to an end. Then the fall together, say of some other sun, distant as Sirius, and our sun, would generate thirty or forty times as much energy for future radiation to other planets. Then, the fall together of other suns will convert more energy into heat and matter to be evaporated and transformed into gascous or nebulous condition. Ages and ages pass away, but ultimately all masses share the same fate, give out their light and heat into space, become dark, and no more seen. Whether this process completes itself independently in different parts of the sidereal system by local integration and disintegration, or by aggregating the whole matter of the sidereal system, the diffusion will undo all previous concentration. Without entering any transcendental inquiry as to the existence or non-existence of infinite systems, but keeping to a practical and soluble question, there is reason to think 1 Presidential Address to Geological Society, 1877: Dr. P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S. Passing Away of Worlds. 429 that all existing solar systems will be reduced again to nebulous form. The universally co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion cause, when attraction prevails, creation to predominate; and when repulsion predominates, chaos to prevail. The actions of the past are repeated in the future, in form, in motion, in life; the same in principle, never the same in concrete result. Destruction follows destruction, through periods long delayed, until the things seen and temporal pass away. Then, if He will who rules, other beginnings and creations arise to occupy an immeasurable future as preceding rhythms of Divine Power occupied an infinite past. Our mind contemplates with awe the sublime spectacle of space and time, of creation and chaos, of life and death, shrined within the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, of God. The epochs of transformation may be separated by time-intervals so enormous that the duration of life on our earth and the duration of our earth itself, may be but a second as compared with a thousand years. Energies wholly unknown to us are at work, and at any moment may produce weal or woe. That which overtakes other worlds may happen to our own; for this, and, something yet nearer, our own dissolution, we have to prepare. Many considerations are involved in it. We will take one that fits our study-The life-sustaining orbs around us, are surpassed, probably a thousand-fold, by those yet lifeless, or those long since dead. It is not unscientific to think that some of us may wander as spectres among inert lifeless masses of ruined worlds-where the dead bury their dead; while others, entering that which is now invisible, possess worlds truly amazing. The lower animals are a parable to us. At certain seasons they abandon their usual haunts, turn from wonted enjoyments, and seek some asylum as if to prepare for new untried condition-they follow a sure guiding of Nature. Even the insect is not deluded in preparing for metamorphosis—no, not one; and awakes unto the gaiety of a new and higher life. Nor shall human dust be irrecoverably scattered by the winds : for good purpose our eyes traverse and oversee the immensity of space, our minds form true notions of the universe. The sun, the stars, the planets, are "brilliants floating in an upper æther," to light us in that pathway of the just which shineth more and more unto perfect day. Beside all this, we have the loving influence of human soul on human soul. We are conscious of a baptism and consecration in which the true belief of holy men binds us to purity and rectitude. Blessed influence, not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic; mysterious, effectual, mighty, as the hidden processes by which life is quickened. Words are but poor ghosts of the grand reality of things that make themselves felt as if they were our flesh. They breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with responsive hands, look at us with sincere glad eyes. The presence of soul to soul is a power filling with emotion, attractive as flame to flame, drawing with gentle compulsion to the sweet enjoyment of union with the Lord. For this union we are being prepared by the existing variety in Nature. Eternal Energy is not limited to natural uniformity, but comes forth in all changes of the world's ever-varying forces. Similar antecedents do not always determine similar consequents. Involution and evolution of a Divine character advance by manifestations increasingly unlike their precedents. From chaos went forth creation, out of the dead came the living. From the present creation and the present life, by different degrees in Nature, as lower steps to the higher, we shall ascend those glorious heights, whither Divine thought and work successively conduct. No wonder that our discipline is somewhat sharp, for the destiny before us is very splendid, and in the coming hallowed glory that our Creed tells us of the universe will never lose its soul of loveliness. "My spirit was entranced With joy exalted to beatitude; The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, William Wordsworth. STUDY XXI. FOLLIES OF THE WISE. "Not as yet Are we in shelter or repose, The Holy House is still beset With leaguer of stern foes." KEBLE "Conquer we shall, but we must first contend; ANON. WE propose to investigate certain statements made by a few scientific men concerning Scripture. If the inquiry should prove that remarkable fact-"the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14)—it may lead them and us to a more reverent heed of that which God has spoken by the prophets, and by His Son Jesus; that the world may be full of a revealed Deity, yet the outside manifestation exercise little or no influence for good, unless it awakens the conscience and regenerates the affections. Our investigation may also correct that hard theological dogmatism which, professing adherence to the very letter of Holy Scripture, departs from that letter through ignorance of the real meaning; and violates the spirit through want of that pure, wise, loving, obedient heart, without which no one is accepted of God. At the outset we encounter a puzzling truth: the Bible, neither teaching science, nor written scientifically, has wellnigh for ever seemed against the secular science of the age, yet the Old Book and the Old Faith survive. Not only so, theologians have been among the first to point out astro nomical and other difficulties in the Bible; while the greatest astronomers and most renowned physicists always assert that Mind planned the world, its processes and laws having interpretation by intelligence as they are the manifestation of Intelligence. To mention only two-who can doubt Newton's piety, or distrust the simple child-like faith of Copernicus? The oppositions of Science in one age against Scripture have generally been removed in the next, and though the time for full mutual reconciliation and verifying has not arrived the mechanism of the world not being wholly revealed, and the best of us "stretching but lame hands of faith," the ablest men have a growing and abiding conviction that intelligence and piety unite in the perfect man. The objectors of old were acute as are objectors now. Ancient heathens well handled, and then cast away as useless, the very weapons which men of our own day gather and refurbish. The Jews, long ago, by pseudo-criticism, did all well-nigh that could be done against the Messianic Prophecies; but those Prophecies yet testify and truly. The complaint that science was not Divinely taught is evidently unreasonable "If the Jews had been told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would have marvelled that it did not constantly descend; and to have explained the wisdom of this would have been to teach Atmology in the Sacred Writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plane, they would only have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to some wild and baseless imaginations, by a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine Speaker, instead of saying that He would set His bow in the clouds, had been made to declare that He gave to water the property of refracting different colours at different angles, how utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been!" It is not for the sake of physical science; but for the eternal problems which lie behind all natural phenomena, and are unaffected and unchanged despite all "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 686: Rev. W. Whewell, D.D. |