And so speaks again he who wrote the 104th Psalm, and the text which I have chosen. To him, too, the mystery of death, and still more the mystery of life, could be explained only by faith in God, and in the Spirit of God. If things died, it was because God took away their breath, and therefore they returned to their dust. And if things lived, it was because the Spirit of God, breathed forth, and proceeding, from God, gave them life. He pictured to himself, I dare to fancy, what we may picture to ourselves--for such places have often been, and are now, in this world--some new and barren land, even as the very gravel on which we stand was once, just risen from the icy sea, all waste and lifeless, without a growing weed, an insect, even a moss. Then, gradually, seeds float thither across the sea, or are wafted by the winds, and grow; and after them come insects; then birds; then trees grow up; and larger animals arrive to feed beneath their shade; till the once barren land has become fertile and rich with life, and the face of the earth is renewed. But by what? "God," says the Psalmist, "has renewed the face of the earth." True, the seeds, the animals came by natural causes: but who was the Cause of those causes? Who sent the things thither, save God? And who gave them life? Who kept the life in floating seeds, in flying spores? Who made that life, when they reached the barren shore, grow and thrive in each after their kind? Who, but the Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of life? God let His Spirit proceed and go forth from Himself upon them; and they were made; and so He renewed the face of the earth. That, my good friends, is not only according to Scripture, but according to true philosophy. Men are slow to believe it now: and no wonder. They have been always slow to believe in the living God; and have made themselves instead dead gods--if not of wood and stone, still out of their own thoughts and imaginations; and talk of laws of nature, and long abstractions ending in ation and ality, like that "Evolution" with which so many are in love just now; and worship them as gods; mere words, the work of their own brains, though not of their own hands--even though they be--as many of them are--Evolution, I hold, among the rest--true and fair approximations to actual laws of God. But before them, and behind them, and above them and below them, lives the Author of Evolution, and of everything else. For God lives, and reigns, and works for ever. The Spirit of God proceedeth from the Father and the Son, giving, evolving, and ruling the life of all created things; and what we call nature, and this world, and the whole universe, is an unfathomable mystery, and a perpetual miracle, The one Author and Ruler of which is the ever-blessed Trinity, of whom it is written--"The glorious majesty of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in His works."