The practical application of the Christ-principle will save the race from hatred, malice and revenge; it will promote prosperity and universal good will. A proximate manifestation of true religion will result from the utilitarian movements of the nineteenthcentury. It is coming to be seen that it does not pay to shut one's eyes against incoming LIGHT.

Entireness, illimitableness, is indispensable to faith. What we do believe, we must believe wholly and without reserve. But a faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no farther, is none.

People condemn what they do not understand. Long acquaintance must be given in the cause of useful truth, and the hardest fatigues endured and digested. Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves. Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, die for it, anything but live for it. Unless religion be viewed and felt in a high, comprehensive way, how large a portion of our intellectual and moral nature does it leave without object and action.

Thoughts are but dreams until their effects are tried. We should not suffer our exertions to flag because our efforts are not speedily effective, for good is never more effectually performed than when it is produced by slow degrees.

How use doth become a habit in a man !

Like every other power, religion too, is widening her empire. Men are no longer measured by their theories, but by what they do. Nothing will help us to avert false theories and customs, save through a utilitarian principle, full of love and wisdom for all mankind.

The gospel of use is the doctrine of weighing, measuring, gauging. It is a development which will come eventually

to every man, telling him that he has been weighed in the balance, telling him that his ideas have been gauged, telling him that his place in the universe has already been described. The doctrine of use will work directly into the church and into other developments of human life, into the state, into society, into the family, and into those relations which constitute home.

From the wide complex

Of co-existent natures, there shall rise
One ORDER, all involving and entire;
For He, beholding in the sacred light
Of His essential Reason, all the shapes
Of swift contingence, all successive ties
Of action propagated through the sum
Of possible existence-He, at once,
Down the long series of eventful time,
So fixed the dates of being, so disposed
To every living soul of every kind
The field of motion and the hour of rest,
That all conspired to His Supreme Design-
To UNIVERSAL GOOD.

PART ELEVENTH.

SCIENCE TEACHES THE UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE. SCIENCE REVEALS UNCHANGING ESSENCES AND PRINCIPLES.

Perfect knowledge is confined to a few elementary abstract truths. By far the greater part of our knowledge is indefinite. We say that we know a man when we can distinguish him from every other individual; yet our knowledge is, in this case, extremely incomplete, for we could not be said to know him thoroughly, unless we know not only every thought that had passed through his mind, but also every material atom composing his physical organism. Our inability to attain this perfect knowledge would not justify our affirming it to be impossible for a man ever to know any of his fellow-men. In like manner, our inability to grasp the infinite, or to know an infinite being in his infinitude, does not warrant the averment that we can have no knowledge of the infinite; for our knowledge of the Infinite Deity is not essentially more qualified and imperfect than is our knowledge of our fellow-men, or of any external object, however infinite it may be.

The gift of God is eternal life. The thinking powers force their way through space, and find a standpoint from which to contemplate the reality of eternal human existence. All the works and dispensations of the Almighty, both in the physical and moral world, are worthy of our contemplation and research; and may ultimately lead to important

discoveries as well as moral instruction. This age of action too greatly outweighs the habit of meditation; hence, the prevalence of a hasty and impatient spirit. This is not a healthy state of mind, because it hinders the development of purely spiritual sentiments and aspirations. It is the duty of those who seek to heighten and enlarge these sentiments, to encourage a contemplative habit of mind; to direct the attention to the progress of discovery in those realms of wonder, and urge and incite to the contemplation of these immutable and admirable laws, which yield such undeniable evidence of the continuous action of a supreme, designing and creative mind. God of the fair and open sky!

How glorious above us springs
The tented dome, of heavenly blue,
Suspended on the rainbow's rings !
Each brilliant star that sparkles through,
Each gilded cloud that wanders free
In evening's purple radiance, gives
The beauty of its praise to Thee.

The consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind and an indifference to death. The relationship and sympathy between the orbs and spheres of immensity-between this world of humanity and that better world of humanity arisen-are recognized naturally and inevitably by man's intuitions and reason. The frequent allusions to the starry heavens, found in the sacred writings, indicates that, in ancient times, the religious contemplation of these marvels of creative and designing power was more habitual than in these modern days, when the minds of even the pious and good are so absorbed in the busy scenes of every-day life, and in the admiration of the mechanical and artistic achievements of their fellow-mortals, that they scarcely allow themselves leisure to consider the heavens, whose mechanism surpasses all mortal conception. The

contemplation of the works of God elevates the mind to the admiration of whatever is great and noble, and so prepares the mind for those high destinies which are appointed for all who are capable of lofty thoughts, and high, unselfish deeds. No mind can approach their contemplation without an expansion of thought.

The heavens are themes of superlative grandeur. They afford the most sublime subject of study which can be derived from science. The magnitude and splendor of the objects, the inconceivable rapidity by which they move, and the enormous distances between them, impress the mind with some idea of the energy that maintains them in their motions, with a durability to which we can see no limit. There is not in the physical world a more splendid example of adaptation of means to the accomplishment of an end, than is exhibited in the nice adjustment of the forces ruling the planetary world. Brightness, penetration, celerity, calmness and comprehensiveness, are some of the characteristics of the stellar universe. To think the thoughts of God after Him, would be, in astronomy, thinking in accordance with the interior forces, and the harmonious manifestations thereof in the visible universe. There is not one feature in the visible creation which is not stamped with Divine origin.

The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame

Their great Original proclaim.

The unwearied sun, from day to day

Does his Creator's power display,

And publishes to every land,

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listning earth
Repeats the story of her birth;