"There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; and there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those who have heard its still small voice' amid rural leisure and placid contentment. But perhaps the knowlege which cometh not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during seasons of affliction; and tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring and take root in the human heart."-Sir Walter Scott. 43 MYSTERIES, ETC. Life and Time. WHAT IS LIFE? We're ill by these Grammarians us'd; To the Grave's fruitful Womb, We call her Life, but Life's a name That nothing here can truly claim. COWLEY, in a note to his Pindaric Ode, whence the above lines are quoted, says: ર Plato, in Timæus, makes this distinction: "That which is, but is not generated; and that which is generated, but is not." This he took from Trismegistus, whose sentence of God was written in the Egyptian temples, "I am all that was, is, or shall be." This doctrine of Plato, that nothing truly is but God, is approved by all the Fathers. Simplicius explains it thus: That which has more degrees of privation, or not-being than of being, (which is the case of all creatures,) is not properly said to be; and again, that which is a perpetual fieri, or making, never is quite made, and therefore, never properly is. Leaving the old "Grammarian," we pass to the science of our own times. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in his Histoire Naturelle générale des Règnes Organiques, in the chapter on the definitions of Life, refutes the common mistake of supposing that vital force suspends or destroys physical action. If these vitalists had but taken the trouble of decomposing each complex question into its elements, instead of cutting the knot which they could not loosen, they would have seen their error. Thus, an animal, while living, "resists" cold, does not "obey" the physical laws of temperature, but keeps constantly above the temperature of the surrounding medium. When dead, this resistance ceases. Does this B prove that vital force destroys physical action? Does it prove that the living animal is enfranchised from those physical laws which regulate the transmission of heat? Not in the least. The more complex conditions have produced a phenomenon different from that witnessed under simpler conditions; but an inorganic substance may manifest an analogous independence (or what seems such) of these laws of transmission, if it be heated by a galvanic current, or by an internal chemical reaction. Again, when we see an animal leap into the air, has he enfranchised himself from the laws of gravitation? Not more than the needle when it leaps to the magnet. * Physiologists appear to have made this mistake in speaking of Life: they have enumerated certain functions, and have called such enumeration life; now function is not life, but the result of life; it is vital organ in action. Bichat defined life as the sumtotal of the functions which resist death: " which amounts merely to this—that life is life. Bichat's definition of life is manifestly faulty in this-that it ignores the essential co-operation of the medium or surrounding circumstances in which organization is placed, and is, therefore, as one-sided and useless as any definition would be which might ignore the organism, and enumerate the circumstances as life; circumstances and individual are correlative, both in psychical and organic life; and man's life, mental and organic, is the result of such correlation. This is what Coleridge indicated, when, in his Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of Life, he defined life as "the Principle of Individuation." This is a plagiarism from the Germans, (in this case from Schelling,) as was most of Coleridge's philosophy. THE AUTHOR OF OUR BEING. Dr. Thomas Woods, of Parsonstown, observes: "If we look at the constitution of matter, the impossibility of a mass being formed, even though atoms might have been in existence, without the interference of some agency different from any at present operating; viewing its arrangements, measured out and bounded with mathematical precision, we must admit that some Being greater than any on this earth, and more powerful than the supposed laws of nature, has formed it. Seeing, also, that in all departments of creation, the object pre-eminently provided for is the welfare and preservation of man, and that the same method is everywhere manifested in carrying it out, we must likewise conclude that the same power which made the arrangements in matter is also the Author of our being. "As in the animate creation, the organization of every living thing is made from one type, so in creation generally, one plan is * Saturday Review, April 25, 1857. The Divine Eternity. taken for the working out of all its details; and whether we examine the combustion of coal, the growth of the living body, or the final destination of the soul throughout eternity, we see the same principle followed out in the accomplishment of each, and we are forced to ascribe a common authorship to all. It is abundantly evident that one mind, and at one time, conceived and set in motion the entire fabric of creation; and that everything, from the smallest particle of matter to the highest organization and disposition of life and power in every stage of its existence, depends for its continuance on Him, and that in everything we do or think we do, we only use the power He has given; and therefore, in all our ways we are indebted to Him, and in all our works, however unconsciously, we worship Him. Whether we pride ourselves on the power of our steam-engines, the rapidity of the telegraph, or the beauty and excellence of photography,the results of Heat, Light, and Electricity—we only declare the wonder of the mechanism He has provided, and the perfection of the arrangements He has made. And as, by virtue of these arrangements, the coal and air when favourably placed together evolve heat, the zinc and acid electricity, and the sunbeam and sensible salt the photograph, so does food taken into the body by virtue of the vital power continue life, and enable the animal to move; and so the blood of Christ applied to the soul, makes also that alive and capable of acting. "In every word we speak, we praise Him,-in everything we do, we must acknowledge Him; we trace in all creation the same hand, in all its arrangements the same mind, and therefore in everything we think or act, to Him be all the Glory."-The Existence of the Deity evidenced by Power and Unity in Creation; from the Results of Modern Science. * THE DIVINE ETERNITY. There are many passages in the Bible, the tendency of which is to give us a view of the Divine Existence, far elevated above any successive duration similar to our own. The self-existent Jehovah revealed his name to Moses as the "I AM," the abiding, not the on-moving existence. Our Divine Redeemer, during his mission on earth, spoke sometimes as man, other times as God. When He spoke from his manhood, He spoke as a being of time, having a past, a present, a future. But when He spoke from his Godhead, He repeated the language of Jehovah to Moses: "Before Abraham was, I AM," not I was. St. Peter's words, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," seem to be more than * In Baron Bunsen's Bible for the People, the word JEHOVAH has its deep significance brought out by being rendered THE ETERNAL. relative, in regard to the inadequacy of all periods of time, the longest as well as the shortest, to measure the Divine duration. May we not consider them absolute, as implying the entire absence of succession in that sublime existence which has neither beginning nor end? The same observation is applicable to the words of Moses in the 90th Psalm: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." As in God there can neither be past nor future, nor any succession of duration, it follows that in HIM there can be no series, or sequency of actions. For if in HIM there could be one act after another, then to Himself would some of his acts be past, and others future: and we should thus relapse into the misconception of attributing to Him a successive duration like our own. What, as regards ourselves, is truly a series of acts or dispensations, the Creation of Man, the Deluge, the call of Abraham, the birth of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, all these must be to God, not a series of acts or dispensations, but one eternal, simultaneous energy. His perception of the successive development of his dispensations, as apprehended by his creatures, does not make them successive as regards Himself. But these contemplations of the Divine Eternity reach no further than the negation of the limits and imperfections of all created minds. We can form no conception of the HOW of that glorious existence which transcends the relations of Time and Space. If the Cherubim themselves veil their eyes before the HOLY ONE, how much more must his glory be incomprehensible to man!-Cronhelm on Predestination. THE DIVINE PERFECTIONS. The "metaphysical qualms" entertained in the present day at our partial conceptions of the Divine Perfections are strangely contrasted with the language of the inspired Writers. They expatiate in wonder and praise on the little we can conceive-in awe and adoration on the much beyond our conception. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmamen showeth his handywork. Day unto day utte night unto night showeth knowledge. language where their voice is not 1 tabernacle for the sun, which his chamber, and rejoiceth going forth is from the the ends of it; and t And then the Ps those of Revelati |