We follow some tiny thread a little way, and hold it secure, but it is connected with another ligament, and this branches out into a third; and instead of exhausting the matter, we find ourselves at the root of an infinite series, of an immense relationship, upon which we have only just opened; and yet what we have is positive knowledge, is something more added to our stock. The circle of the known has positively widened, but the horizon of the unknown has widened also, and, instead of being to us now, as it seemed some time ago, a solid and ultimate limit, it is only an ethereal wall, only to us a relative boundary, and behind are infinite depths and mystery. Our scientific knowledge at the present day reaches this grand result--it clears up the deception that the system of nature is mere flat, dead materiality, a few mechanical laws, a few rigid forms. It shows that these are only the husks, the outer garments of mighty forces of subtile, far-reaching agencies; and the most common, every-day truths, that seemed stale and exhausted, become illuminated with infinite meaning, and are the blossoms of an infinite life. The wider our circle of discovery, the wider our wonder; the more startling our conclusions, the more perplexing our questions. We have not exhausted the universe;--we have just begun to see its harmony of proportion and of relations, without penetrating a fathom into its real life. How and what is that power that works in the shooting of a crystal, and binds the obedience of a star; that shimmers in the northern Aurora, and connects by its attraction the aggregated universe; that by its unseen forces, its all-prevalent jurisdiction, holds the little compass to the north, blooms in the nebula and the flower, weaves the garment of earth and the veil of heaven, darts out in lightning, spins the calm motion of the planets, and presides mysteriously over all motion and all life? And what is life, and what is death, and what a thousand things that we touch, and experience, and think we know all about? O! as science, as nature opens upon us, we find mystery after mystery, and the demand upon the human soul if for faith, faith in high, yes, in spiritual realities; and this materialism that would shut us in to death and sense, that denies all spirit and all miracle, is shattered like a crystal sphere, and the soul rushes out into wide orbits and infinite revolutions, into life, and light, and power, that are of eternity,--that are of God!