420 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATURAL MAGIC. 



solitary testimony in behalf of them when reproduced in 

 an age like this, in which we are only beginning to feel 

 fully the littleness of achievement, the feebleness of human 

 capacity, and the inexhaustible harvest of eternal discovery 

 and expansion before us ? " Through the EVIDENCE con- 

 viction, manifestation, demonstration, EXty^oc OF THINGS 

 NOT SEEN" (for that is the apostolic and authoritative 

 meaning of Christian FAITH, which those who do not know 

 it call credulity), " we understand that the worlds were 

 framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen 

 were not made of things which do appear." How far such 

 a fact reaches through and beyond the uttermost depths 

 of present scientific achievement, even when we deal with 

 the subject of Matter only ! What, for example, do we 

 really know or explain of any portion of matter by saying, 

 in the ultimatum of scientific language, It is a primary 

 element? "What is gold made of?" a child will ask of 

 a philosopher. " Gold ! why gold is gold it is a primary 

 element, my dear it is nothing but gold :" so replies the 

 scientific sage. "Yes, but what is it made of?" insists 

 the pertinacious child ; for a child is a healthy inquirer, 

 and has not learned to be silenced with an unsatisfactory 

 answer. " What can it be made of but gold ?" says the 

 stultified philosopher ; " chemistry can reduce it into 

 nothing else gold is gold." But the child is not 

 answered. He is not yet acquainted with Mammon's 

 fluctuating, but on the whole approximately satisfactory 

 solution of its value ; he is not questioning his broker, 

 and is innocent of the ways of 'Change, so he pecks 

 another fathom deep into the wisdom of the vexed philo- 

 sopher, and spits him through his shallows with the broad 

 and startlingly assertive proposition, " But gold must be 

 made of something ;" and then, petulantly reiterative, adds, 

 " What is it made of?" The philosopher, remembering 

 when he also had such a question suggested by his own 



