348 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



Power which, though not personal, yet lives and moves 

 in the inmost being and essence of all persons ; a Power 

 resistless, but beneficent, which, partially suspended in 

 winter, bursts into a glorious resurrection of life and 

 beauty in spring, in bud and blossom, in insect, bird, 

 and brute ; a Power gracious and renovating, which 

 temporarily suspended in our exhausted hearts, yet ever 

 wells up again in inner secret and satisfying springs of 

 hope and joy and peace, life-restoring, light-giving, to 

 our heavy-laden souls. There is a Power, of which 

 matter and energy, life and light, thought and volition, 

 are but forms ; a Power, too, whose exhaustless life and 

 energy are but slightly drawn upon by all the various 

 demands made upon it in our little earth, working as it 

 does simultaneously as one and the same power in each 

 of the myriad stellar systems dispersed through infinite 

 space. In the most distant orbs, from which Science, 

 by her searching analysis and improved methods of 

 observation, has recently brought back her spectroscopic, 

 supplementing her telescopic, reports, the same power is 

 displayed in the composition of matter and in the main- 

 tenance of law as at home on the earth ; and probably 

 in many of those distant spheres it works in the pro- 

 duction of life, while probably also, nay, somewhere 

 certainly, and whether working by other and superior 

 art or working, as here, by natural selection chiefly, it 

 has attained to grander and more excellent results than 

 the choicest terrestrial things, to something greater 

 than truth, beauty, virtue, happiness, or if only to these, 

 then to a higher species of them, to a peace more serene 

 and settled than ours, to a truth more clear and free 

 from error, to a beauty more pervading, to a happiness 

 less fugitive and more unalloyed, to a virtue superior to 

 our smirched earthly product. 



