ON LIGHT. 



all words; the first word ever recorded to have been 

 pronounced. It is the Hebrew for LIGHT ("liN AOR)." 



(2.) Assuredly there is something in the phenomena 

 of Light ; in its universality ; in the high office it per- 

 forms in creation; in the very hypotheses which have 

 been advanced as to its nature ; which powerfully sug- 

 gests the idea of the fundamental, the primeval, the ante- 

 cedent and superior in point of rank and conception to 

 all other products or results of creative power in the 

 physical world. " It is LIGHT," as we took occasion to 

 observe at the conclusion of the last lecture (not with- 

 out reference to this very consideration), "and the free 

 communication of it from the remotest regions of the 

 universe, which alone can give, and does fully give us, 

 the assurance of a uniform and all-pervading energy 

 a MECHANISM almost beyond conception complex, mi- 

 nute, and powerful, by which that influence, or rather 

 that movement, is propagated. Our evidence of the 

 existence of gravitation fails us beyond the region of the 

 double stars, or leaves us at best only a presumption 

 amounting to moral conviction in its favour. But the 

 argument for a unity of design and action afforded by 

 light stands unweakened by distance, and is co-extensive 

 with the universe itself." * 



(3.) What we propose in the following lecture is to 

 make intelligible, in as simple language and form as the 

 nature of the subject will admit, the grounds of this 

 assertion. In some of its features it is too complex 

 and abstruse to be thoroughly followed out by any one 

 * "Celestial Measurings and Weighings," p. 218. 



