'cially 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 con'firmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, 'and by Spiritual 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 de'clare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the 'Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept enough; which 'nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of 'meaning.

“But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be con'stant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not the Machine of the

'Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules ?" Probable enough,

good friends: nay, I too must believe that the God, whom 'ancient inspired 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?

'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 individuals have been nowhere but 'where we also are; have seen some hand breadths 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 succeeded in detecting, is to me as pre'cious 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 เ 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?

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6 System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, 'Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expan'sion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few com'puted centuries, and measured 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 depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and peb'ble, 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 (unmiraculously 'enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is man; 'his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; 'his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of 'Providence through Eons of ons.

'We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it 'is, whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, 'does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? With 'its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and

'philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands ' of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celes'tial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Pro'phets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. 'As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive 'bravely; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably inter'twisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, 'some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together 'this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. 'That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Re'cipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic Cookery Book, 'of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve 'itself, the fewest dream.

'Custom,' continues the Professor, 'doth make dotards of us 'all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of 'Weavers; and weaves airy raiment for all the Spirits of the 'Universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as minis'tering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiri'tual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy 'complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do every thing by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest 'simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, 'what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against 'Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?

'Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks of Cus'tom: but of all these perhaps the cleverest is her knack of per'suading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to 'be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must 'work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond fool'ish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when in our 'resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. 'Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because 'I have seen it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? 'There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless,

'indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift 'of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is 'to the Steam-engine; a power whereby Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth realised.

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'Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the po 'tency of Names; which indeed are but one kind of such Custom'woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner ' of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still 'the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious'terrific, altogether infernal boiling up of the Nether Chaotic 'Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims 'thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the 'Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily 'eye, or without it? In every the wisest soul lies a whole world ' of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, ' and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable 'flowery Earth-rind.

'But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, 'as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world'enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun ' and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial 'ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,-lie all-embracing, as 'the universal canvass, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illu'sions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. 'In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavour to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and 'look through.

'Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and 'wished himself Anywhere, behold he was there. By this means 'had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated 'Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnicht'wo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite

'side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his 'fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time'annihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last 'groschen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap on your felt, and, 'simply by wishing that your were Anywhere, straightway to be 'There! Next to clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing 'that you were Anywhen, straightway to be Then! This were in'deed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the 'World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; 'there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to 'face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in 'the depth of that late Time!

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'Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the 'Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant 'or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, 'thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and ' communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beck'onings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of 'Tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both are. 'Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. 'Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's C Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it 'there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; 'that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting 'Now.

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'And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?—O ' Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,— but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still myste'riously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with God!— 'Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or 6 are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, 'should it unhappily seem new, thou mayst ponder at thy lei