102 THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 
brought within range of our vision. Though 
by measure the distance is but a foot or less, 
yet looking down this long vista to catch a 
glimpse of the border-land of minute life, the 
sight is impressively grand. It is a sublime 
waymark of Jehovah’s creative skill, yet it is 
only a fingerboard pointing on to still more 
remote regions. Multiplying the wonder-re¬ 
vealing powers of our instrument, and turning 
its penetrating inspection until its vision is 
wholly exhausted, still the climax of receding 
life has never been reached; there has ever 
been to the investigator a smaller still which 
baffles inspection, * and there was the hiding of 
his power.’ The beginnings of life will prob¬ 
ably ever lie hidden from human inspection. 
Like one who has followed its downward path¬ 
way farther perhaps, and with a closer inspec¬ 
tion, than any other man, we are compelled ‘ by 
an intellectual necessity to cross the boundary 
of experimental evidence,’ and, by a faith to 
which he is an entire stranger, know that ‘ by 
him were all things created, that are in heaven, 
and that are in earth, visible and invisible,’ and 
equally God-like whether hanging incompre¬ 
hensible worlds in empty space, or peopling a 
