For the rest, and for those large questions which I touched in connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and none can tell what will be after us. What opinions--what convictions--the infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it live out together to the middle of another century, only a very bold man would undertake to conjecture! 'The time will come,' said Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materialising tendencies of modern thought; 'the time will come when the belief in God will be as the tales with which old women frighten children; when the world will be a machine, the ether a gas, and God will be a force.' Mankind, if they last long enough on the earth, may develope strange things out of themselves; and the growth of what is called the Positive Philosophy is a curious commentary on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred--be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us--this only we may foretell with confidence--that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain--that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and his destiny. There will remain yet Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things; Falling from us, vanishings-- Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised-- High instincts, before which our mortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised. There will remain Those first affections-- Those shadowy recollections-- Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day-- Are yet the master-light of all our seeing-- Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the Eternal Silence. FOOTNOTES: [A] It is objected that Geology is a science: yet that Geology cannot foretell the future changes of the earth's surface. Geology is not a century old, and its periods are measured by millions of years. Yet, if Geology cannot foretell future facts, it enabled Sir Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of Australian gold. [B] February 1864. TIMES OF ERASMUS AND LUTHER: THREE LECTURES DELIVERED AT NEWCASTLE, 1867. LECTURE I.