even Science often assumes that it is now building a foundation which will never need to be shaken to pieces; and is proud of the hope that the future will only raise an ever-growing structure upon this firm basis. If we speak not of science, nor of philosophy, and not of minds which they have opened and illuminated, we find everywhere and always the most profound conviction, that precisely what is now believed to be, is. Sir William Temple says: "When a man has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes there is no more to be seen; when he is at the end of his line, he is at the bottom of the ocean; when he has shot his best, he is sure none ever did or ever can shoot better or beyond it; his own reason he holds to be the certain measure of truth; and his own knowledge, of what is possible in nature." He uses this language reproachfully; and undoubtedly this quality or propensity of the human mind may be carried to excess, and often is so; and then it hinders progress, and fetters thought itself with bands of iron, and brings upon mind that stagnation which is akin to death. So it does great mischief; but this is no more than can be said of every other quality or tendency of our common nature. Which of them all is not liable to excess and abuse, and may not then become the instrument and means of vast mischief? In itself, and in its rightful exercise and influence, this same disposition to plant the foot very firmly on the ground we at that moment occupy, is not bad, but good. Without this, we should live as in a dream; the present would be only an unstable point between infinite uncertainties; the past we know to have been full of error, and if we hope that the future may be full of progress, still, if we looked upon the present as only one more mistake, which will soon join the long procession of discovered fallacies, we could not have each day the energy and interest demanded by that day's duty. Every man, stand where

he will, is in the centre of the sky.

Over him and around

him the bending dome extends in all directions, as equally as if it were made for him, and from him as its central point. No knowledge prevents this appearance; nor should it; for in one sense it is even physically true. And let him stand where he may, the earth and the sky are his, and made for him; and as completely his for all use that is truly good, as if they were his alone. So, in whatever point of time a man stands, he is in the centre of the two eternities. All that the past has done was for this moment; and from it, as from a new beginning, the future sets forth. And it is right for a man to feel as if the present, and the work he has to do, were all the world to him; so far, at least, as this is needed to give him interest and energy. It is well that we always feel that we stand NOW upon firm ground. And there is a view of this subject which may show us that we are always or may be always-resting upon a reality.

Appearances are of two kinds; for they come from two sources. There are man's appearances and there are God's appearances. Man sometimes invests truth with falsehood; or what he thinks to be reality with what he knows to be falsity. He wishes to disguise a fact, a feeling, or a thought, and has no means of doing so but by superinducing a veil of falsity; and if we would reach the truth, we can do so only by rending this veil away. We begin by detecting the falsity and calling it by its true name; and we pass, not through it, but from it, to the truth; from it, and to its opposite. Not so is it with the chain of appearances through which our course lies, as we advance towards that which is absolute truth. For these appearances are God's

work, and not man's. They are forms of truth; they are truth, but truth accommodated to human perception, to human exigency, to human progress. They are envelopes, successive envelopes, which surround truth, and are themselves formed of modified truth. When, therefore, we rest upon the clear perception of any one of them, be it the outermost and the first which meets the perceptive powers, or one which lies far within and has been reached only by long and laborious efforts and after many successive steps, we may well stand upon it as upon the solid reality of actual truth.

Science has made it certain that the sun is always in the centre of the system, or rather, that the centre of the system is always in the sun, and that its apparent motion is due to the actual motion of the earth. But it is still as true as it ever was, that the sun rises and sets every day; and that his rising and his setting make the day that summons to labor, and the night that permits repose. The discoveries of Geology only strengthen the idea of the vast permanence of the mountains. There they still stand, planted by Power itself, and still give the idea of power and permanence. There they are, anchored in the rushing stream of time; and when the mind is tossed upon its waves, and borne by the swift current until the sense of continual change and universal fluctuation threatens to drag it into this unresting whirl, - then we may still "flee to the mountains." We may look at them as they stand in their steadfast magnificence, and ask them to give us the thought and feeling that there are some great, enduring certainties; some of the products of the Almighty Will, upon which the tempest and the wave beat in vain. And the answer they give, and always have given, and always will give, makes no discord with the utterance of science; for that tells only that eternity does not belong to things

outside of the soul. And if the progress of science should hereafter count among the conjectures which it had converted into certainties, the hypothesis that the ultimate atoms of external nature are only forces, and that matter is therefore, in the last analysis, only ultimated power, it would never be the less true, that we have a solid world to stand upon, and a home wherein we may do the work appointed to us. For this certainty would not be shaken, although science should satisfy us that our first conceptions of the nature of the material world were gross and inadequate.

As knowledge grows, we know better the extent of our ignorance. Beyond the boundaries of what is known, there lies the unknown; as these enlarge, so does that; and the more we know, the more we see afar off that we do not know; and the deeper seems the mystery that covers with its clouds the distant unknown. The acquisition and enlargement of knowledge have often been compared to the ascent of a hill; and the comparison may be carried quite far. As one climbs upward, his horizon enlarges. That which before terminated his view, and was seen obscurely, now lies more beneath him, and in full sight. Beyond it spreads a broader field, wholly unseen before. And as he ascends, and his horizon widens and retreats, he not only sees much more of that which he sees dimly because it is at the farthest limit of his vision, but he sees this still more obscurely than he saw before the things which bounded his view and formed a nearer and narrower horizon. It may be so with all increase of knowledge. The perpetual law of its growth may be the continual coming within distincter perception of that which was conjectured rather than known; while all knowledge continually suggests a world of objects without its domain, of which there are yet only very dim intimations and

suppositions, or even not so much as these. Therefore progress may be eternal. We are apt to imagine the highest wisdom as not only bringing the greatest amount within the grasp of certainty, but as leaving the least uncertain. The contrary of this last proposition may be true. The highest created intelligence, that has been growing in wisdom for a time nearest to eternity, may be able to solve all the questions which perplex inferior intellects; but may also see, along the outermost limits of his own knowledge, a vaster mystery than can be suspected to exist by those who have not ascended so high. The nearer he draws to the Infinite, the better he can measure his distance from that goal which he may ever approach but never reach; and the more profound will be his sense of the unfathomable depth and measureless extent of truths which lie so far from him, that in an earlier stage of knowledge he could have had no intimation even of their existence. As he grows wiser, he better comprehends eternity, and acquires a more perfect belief in the infinite treasures which eternity cannot exhaust.

It may indeed be said that the increase of knowledge never answers a question of moment without suggesting more and deeper questions than it solves. This may be the law of ages as well as of individuals; and it may be one evidence of the advanced position occupied at this day by the human mind in the more cultivated portions of our race, that strange questions and startling facts are now presented for consideration, which are deeper in their import and more difficult of solution than those which men have been in the habit of contemplating. And it may not be evidence that an individual partakes of this advance of intellect, that he ignores these questions because he cannot answer them, or denies or despises these facts because they lie beyond the limits of his customary thought, and refuse