convicted of sin, and have become penitent, your sin ceases, and you will go to heaven." But the bee in the sudden illumination of death whispered faintly but resolutely, "No, by heaven, and earth, and hell! None of your tricks on travellers bound for the undiscovered country. It was not until I lost my power to sin that I felt sinful; therefore I was never a sinner, and I'm not a sinner now." Whereupon the bee with a last effort flew into the bosom of a rose and died happy. I now come to the Material source of the idea of God. The Ether from which everything was evolved fills all space: it interpenetrates all Matter so intimately that the electrons of an atom swim in it with the liberty of fish in the sea. The Ether has never been analysed, quantitatively, qualitatively, or volumetrically; it has never been seen, heard, smelt, felt, tasted, or weighed. A mathematician has suggested that the Ether is the unimaginable world of four dimensions, including, interpenetrating and transcending our cognizable Universe as a cube which is a world of three dimensions includes and transcends a possible world of two dimensions contained in a superficial square. Certain, if a world of two dimensions can exist, a world of four dimensions is not impossible; but we require to complete the series with a linear world of one dimension and a punctual world of none, which is absurd. Nevertheless, it is possible to form some idea of the nature of the Ether. Its invisibility is not beyond our conception: this negative quality is characteristic of many fluids, notably of the atmosphere; but the atmosphere becomes apparent in the object-glass of the telescope when the moon is seen like a white pebble in a rushing stream. The imponderability of the Ether can also be conceived by analogy with the atmosphere. Every man, knowing nothing of it, carries upon his shoulders a column of air sixty miles high and weighing many tons. In calm weather the very presence of this voluminous vapour is unfelt: it is only when the wind rises that we know how heavy its hand can be. Thus a poetical or concrete conception of the Ether is not negatived by that which it is not. But this omnipresent substance can be conceived positively, and the most suitable analogue is the sea. The sea consists of two gases--hydrogen and oxygen, united chemically to form water, and containing in solution two or three hundred grains to the pint of compounds of the following forms of Matter: Kalium, natrium, magnesium, calcium, sulphur, carbon, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and traces of everything soluble and partially soluble in water: it contains also, dissolved in various salts and bases, the very elements, hydrogen and oxygen, of which it is itself compounded. If a fluid so simple as water, braided of only three molecules of Matter, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen, can be so powerful a solvent, it follows that a fluid so complex as the Ether, woven and interwoven of