194 THE MYSTERY OF MATTER. 



In the words of an anonymous minor poet : 

 " Even the solid earth we tread 

 Must some day lie cold and dead, 

 And the strong Sun's glowing might, 

 Source of all our life and light, 

 Must at length grow dark and cold. 

 And the myriad stars which burn 

 Through the Universe untold 

 Miist to nothingness return." 

 Energy could not create itself; there must be something 

 behind and beyond, some stupendous Power who inspired it 

 at the beginning. Who breathed into dead matter the breath of 

 life. And the Power who at the i&rst bestowed the energy can 

 re-impart it, and transform or re-create a dying world or imiverse. 

 We are told there is to be a new heaven and a new earth. It 

 is also impossible to conceive that the countless myriads of 

 myriads of corpuscles, infinitesimal specks all exactly similar 

 to each other in every respect, and endowed with such boundless 

 possibilities, should have come into existence by accident, or 

 that they could have made themselves. We must perforce 

 acknowledge that they must all have been formed by one and 

 the same Creative Intelligence, and that this Creative Intelligence 

 must of necessity be Almighty and Eternal. Thus the latest 

 teachings of Science all tend to strengthen our belief and 

 confirm our faith in the Divine Creator " who formed all things 

 by the word of His power," and " in Wliom we live and move and 

 have our being." 



One thing more : as energy forms the basis of the material 

 universe, and as one of the most conspicuous forms of energy is 

 light, we read with added meaning those grand old words which 

 stand at the beginning of the book of GTenesis : 



" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And 

 tlie earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon 

 the face of the deep. . . . And God said, Let thei-e be light, 

 and there was light." 



Trans. Hertfordshire Nat. Mist. Soc, Vol. XIII, Part 3, February, 1908. 



