THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. 245 



from any consideration of the supernatural. But 

 Nature and the supernatural cannot be separated by 

 any clear-cut line of distinction. Paradoxical as the 

 assertion may seem, they are one. Who can possibly 

 examine the lowest vegetable forms, the diatoms, 

 whose elaborate and delicate tracery, as delineated 

 in the microscope, no weaver's skill could rival, and 

 yet not ask what wondrous Artificer moulded and 

 fashioned them, and decorated the marge of the 

 stagnant pond or the rocky ocean-pool with such 

 perfect though minute beauties of structure, thus 

 gratifying the vision as well as satisfying the wants 

 of those tiny creatures whose food they mainly 

 constitute ? And how could any intelligent being 

 watch the Protean transformations of the lowest 

 animal organisms, the Amoebae, whose pseudo-fingers 

 shoot forth from every part of them when they 

 desire to grasp their prey, and are drawn back into 

 the slimy substance of the creature as soon as 

 its victim has been absorbed, without being led to 

 wonder from what Source of life these vital functions 

 were derived ? But questions like these involve 

 the introductiou of the supernatural, and hence 

 Nature cannot even be observed properly without 

 quitting the narrow shore of visible fact for the 

 boundless sea of the Divine. Every line of investi- 

 gation along which the scientist proceeds must lead 

 him sooner or later to inquire concerning the supreme 

 First Caa&e of all that is ; and if at that point these 

 questionings of the intellect are stifled by the answer 

 that they are beyond the province of the student 

 of Nature, then assuredly the mind is degraded, its 



