1S2 VTGXETTE$ FKOM INVISIBLE LIFE. 



the life has fled, and our analysis may indeed pro- 

 ceed, but the result will be that of dead, not living 

 material. 



The chemist may give us the constituent 

 elements of this dead matter, may possibly though 

 as yet he has not done it reproduce it in his 

 laboratory by methods not ordinarily employed 

 by nature, yet the living element, the one thing 

 needful, will be lacking, and he will be as far 

 off as ever from the unapproachable cause : the 

 absolutely invisible life of the universe, " whom no 

 man hath seen or can see," but " in whom we all 

 live and move and have our being," in whom centres 

 all our confidence, all our joy in the present, and 

 hopes in the future. 



Finally, the author would have his work read in 

 the spirit in which it is written, which cries, " Give 

 me truths, for I am weary of the surfaces," in the 

 spirit of the men of old : preferring things to names. 

 The prevailing spirit of the present time is that 

 of yain, and which, when applied to the study of 

 nature, results in a reproduction of the "apples 

 of Sodom " beautiful in appearance, but yielding 

 only bitterness and dust, when appropriated by 



