POWER OF LIGHT. 165 



-we can mark its power, and from all, we can, under cer- 

 tain conditions, evoke it in lustre and activity. Over all 

 and through all light spreads its ethereal force, and mani- 

 fests, in all its operations, powers which might well exalt 

 the mind of Plato to the idea of an omniscient and omni- 

 present God. Science, with her Ithuriel wand, has, how- 

 ever, shown that light is itself the effect of a yet more 

 exalted cause, which we cannot reach. 



Indeed, the attentive study of the fine abstractions of 

 science lifts the mind from the grossness of matter, step 

 by step, to the refinements of immateriality, and there 

 appear, shadowed out beyond the physical forces which 

 man can test and try, other powers still ascending, until 

 they reach the Source of every good and every perfect 



