119 



even the sun must grow feeble and old in time, spend all his 

 kinetic energy, and die, as his planets have died before him. 

 While differing completely from Sir William as to the mode in 

 which the final renovation of all things is to be accomplished, 

 we are rejoiced to find that in the belief as to the fact of 

 " new heavens and a new earth,^^ we are agreed. " Thus,^^ he 

 states, " we have the sober scientific certainty that heavens and 

 earth shall ^ wax old as doth a garment,^ and that this slow 

 progress must gradually, by natural agencies which we see going 

 on under fixed laws, bring about circumstances in which ^ the 

 elements shall melt with fervent heat/ With such views 

 forced upon us by the contemplation of dynamical energy and 

 its laws of transformation of dead matter, dark indeed would be 

 the prospects of the human race if unillumined by that light 

 which reveals ^ new heavens and a new earth.' 



39. The next assumption, and the last to be noticed, is 

 assuredly the most startling of all_, — that physical force may be 

 converted into, or may persist as, mental force ; that motion 

 may become thought or feeling. The other conversions 

 may be understood, whether assented to or not, because 

 there is some congruity between them : heat into light, 

 electricity, or magnetism is plausible, even if not actual ] but this 

 other is a conversion, at which the veriest revivalist must stand 

 aghast. That the thoughts of a Paul, Plato, or Newton should 

 be, after all, only modes of motion ; only the force that roasts 

 a herring, doing a somewhat diflPerent work, is slightly 

 humihating. But this matters not : if it be true, we must gulp 

 down, as best we can, our vanit}^, and swallow the unpalatable 

 fact. But can a man be found who states it as a fact ? Yes, 

 the Rev. Baring- Gould, although, we beheve, a somewhat high 

 Churchman, says it is a fact in his able work on the " Origin and 

 Development of Religious Belief y About the last book in the 

 world where we would have anticipated such a doctrine. lie 

 defines force as ^' that which produces or resists motion but 

 this definition he never adheres to, — evidently confounding force 

 and motion, he blends Grove and Tyndall together so as to 

 confuse both. He immediately adds, " In physics, light, colour,, 

 heat, &c., are modes of force but he clearly means modes of 

 motion. This is confirmed by what follows, where motion only is 

 referred to. Light is,'' he says, ^^a modification of force. 

 According to the theory now universally accepted, it consists of a 

 vibratory motion of the particles of a luminous body propagated 

 in waves wdiich flow in at the pupil of the eye, and, breaking 



* Good Words, 1862, p. 606. 



