THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 3 



religion? The orbs around us declare that the government 

 rests upon His mighty shoulders. He sitteth in the circle of 

 the heavens and the reins of the universe are in His hand. 



The question of the plurality of worlds is one that strangely 

 fascinates the trembling hearts of the sons of men. It is good 

 for man, this spiritual atom inhabiting a material atom, to have 

 penetrated into the mysteries of creation, but if the universe 

 remains only a great material mechanism moved by physical 

 forces, if nature is at the best in his eyes but a gigantic labora- 

 tory, if this matchless, magnificent science of the heavens 

 confines the efforts of the human mind eternally to the geome- 

 try of the orbs around us, if the universe is merely an assem- 

 blage of inert bodies floating in space and only to be investigated 

 by formulae and diagrams, then, indeed, this science will not 

 attain its end. Can we not go farther ; can we not stretch forth 

 the hand and feel under dead matter the throb of life? Bishop 

 Warren says " the universe is God writ large." His empire is 

 one of life and not of death. Are these planets, that with our 

 earth were cradled in the fiery sun and sparkle on the garments 

 of the night, merely splendid sepulchres " cast as rubbish to the 

 void," while this little earth of ours is the only one that 

 pulsates with the waves of life? And is life to be centred here 

 and death there? The voice of reason says no! Analogy 

 proclaims it as an absurdity. 



" Who can believe that the Great Architect 

 With all these fires the heavenly arches decked 

 Only for show." 



The unaided vision shows this earth of ours to be teeming 

 with life, mountain and plain, river and ocean, yea, even the 

 deserts filled with life, and when we turn the microscope to the 

 invisible world below us we see the leaves of plants become 

 prairies for swarms of living molecules who are giants compared 

 to a yet lower order of creatures who feed like parasites upon 

 the larger living atoms. The network of universal life stretches 

 everywhere in this earth. Life here on this little planet is so 

 thronged that it struggles and pants for even a foothold ; life 



