'all times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions 'also, as a boundless, everlasting Psalm of Triumph. 'Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol of the God' like. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; ' is not Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and 'Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for 'organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning 'Stars sing together.'

CHAPTER VIII.

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.

IT is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; Cloth-webs and Cobwebs,' of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, worldembracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked. fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed.

Here therefore properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. Courage, then!' may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful

meditation, have found not to be unintelligible; but on the contrary to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do

ours:

'Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus quietly begins the Professor; far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of ques'tions were : What specially is a Miracle? To that

Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; 'whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and phial of 'vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle.To my 'Horse again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, 'do not I work a miracle, and magical" Open sesame!"

every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike?

""But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the 'Laws of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by 'this new question: What are the Laws of Nature? 'To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no 'violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some 'far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spi' ritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to 'bear on us with its Material Force.

'Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground shall one, that can make Iron 'swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach 'Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, 'such declaration were inept enough; which neverthe'less to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of ' meaning.

"“But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she ' be constant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalter'able rules?" Probable enough, good friends: nay, 'I too must believe that the God, whom ancient, in'spired men, assert to be "without variableness or shadow of turning," does indeed never change; that Nature, 'that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move 'by the most unalterable rules. And now of you too I 'make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable 'rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be?

6

They stand written in our Works of Science, say 'you; in the accumulated records of man's Experience? -Was man with his Experience present at the Creation, 'then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest ' scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations ' of the Universe, and gauged every thing there? Did 'the Maker take them into His Counsel; that they read 'His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than 'this? Alas, not in anywise! These scientific indivi'duals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into the 'Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore.

'Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits 'that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have suc'ceeded in detecting,-is to me as precious as to 'another. But is this what thou namest "Mechanism

' of the Heavens," and " System of the World;" this, ' wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's 'Fifteen thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some 'paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been— 'looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Waybill; so that we can now prate of their Where'about; their How, their Why, their What, being hid 'from us as in the signless Inane ?

System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is 'his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries, and mea'sured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, ' on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known 'to us: but who knows what deeper courses these de'pend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our 'little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every 'cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its 'little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic 'Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek 'is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmira'culously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such

a minnow is man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his 'Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and pe'riodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Eons of Eons.

To

'We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a "Volume it is,-whose Author and Writer is God. 'read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know