THE CONCEPTION OF THE GREAT REALITY. 



247 



Xature may be likened to the glass of a window upon which 

 may be seen patterns, smudges, dead flies, etc. ; it requires 

 a knowledge of the reality to enable us to look through 

 the glass at the reality which is beyond. 

 Fourth!?/.— That it is not we who are looking out upon Xature, 

 but that it is the Great Keality which is looking into us 

 and persistently trying to tell us the sublimest truths. 

 Mr. Martin Rouse. — I wanted to say that I did not understand 

 how there can be no sequence to God. If One cannot see faster 

 than light and yet only as slowly as light. He cannot see at two 

 different rates at the same moment, and therefore He must have one 

 definite rate of seeing, and if He sees at one definite rate, then He 

 sees each event in succession, and therefore there must be a past as 

 well as a present and future to Him. 



Kev. John Tuckwell. — I thought I should like to say a few 

 words ; but at this late hour they will be few. I cannot help 

 thinking that admirable though this paper is in its intention, and 

 though it is valuable and suggestive, there are a great many 

 sentences in it that need to be corrected. I think the writer of 

 the paper has, at all events, got into some confusion in the use of 

 the word realiiij. In some cases he prints it with a small and in 

 other cases with a large r. I suppose the capital letter indicates 

 iSome slightly difi'erent conception in his own mind to that indicated 

 by the small r, but surely God is not the only reality ! 



I confess the paper is confusing, and I hope the lecturer will revise 

 it so that it may be a little more accurate in some of its details. 



I would refer to one of his illustrations. He has told us that as 

 you get away from the world you see things that transpired 

 yesterday ; and then, further away, things that transpired a year ago 

 and a century ago, and so on. But I think he has forgotten to 

 prove to us that ether exists everywhere. How do we know to 

 w^hat extent throughout Space ether exists All this is based on 

 the assumption that ether exists universally throughout Space, and 

 this conclusion as to the presence of everything at one moment 

 is all dependent on weaves, or rills, whatever may be the correct 

 expression, in this mysterious substance, ether. But you have there 

 the idea of succession. Every wave of the ether, every beat of the 

 insect's wing, is preceded by one beat and is followed by another 

 beat. Here you have, in the very language of the paper, a denial 



R 



