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First, the outside, solid and massive, consisting of flesh and bones; this has no intelligent sense, and therefore cannot have knowledge of self or things about it. Second, an inner layer, the vital air. This again can have no such knowledge, for when a man sleeps his body is at perfect irawMRty, m f frnn i fty , ftrrR*wtar, irofaw*?. xviii THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS. rest, and the vital air is only in aetion in a state of inhalation and exhalation ; but in this state, if another man were to remove a part of his dress or take money from his pocket, the sleeping man would not be conscious of it, and therefore has no knowledge of things about him. Third, the next inner covering is the mind, which ijs also devoid of this knowledge ; for experience has taught us that mind is a place where every imaginative idea takes its rise, and according to the decision arrived at there, the organs of the body are either propelled into action or allowed to remain at rest, and as it is the most swift and irresolute, so also is it the most uncertain and defective. The fourth inner covering is individualization, or self-sufficiency. It is an. arrogance which has always a mistaken view, and is followed, as pride in the English pro- verb, by a fall. Fifth, the last covering is joy, or vainglory, which is always momentary, and brings on sufferings and misery. But beyond all these is the soul — the seat of contemplation, tranquillity, and peace. To comprehend this scientific truth, man must extricate himself from worldly illusion, and for this mind requires prayer or labour for know- ledge. I go on to consider Astronomy — that grand science which explains the nature and motions of the bodies filling infinite space, including our own tiny world in its comparatively unimportant character of a planet, or member of the solar system. What a vast progress has been made in this, from the first presumption of ignorance, the crude conception of a fixed sphere, with an outer sphere, forming the heavens, revolving round it once in twenty-four hours! That vain conception made this globe which we inhabit the most important and central object of a mighty whole ; while the Sun, more than a million times the size of our earth, and other stars of equal or greater magnitude — “ suns innumerable by numbers that have name” — were supposed to be small and insignificant lights formed solely for our comfort or convenience. It was long before the present system was generally admitted. Galileo was not the ordy martyr of reason and humility who suffered at the hands of ignorance and wounded pride. But had not such men as Galileo and Herschel and Newton arisen and laboured for the truth in spite of popular obloquy, our notion of the sidereal system would still be the elementary one of the u Iliad.” Science and Art walk now haiid in hand. The astronomer, THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS. XI X aided by the telescope of the philosophical mechanician, penetrates the regions of infinite space, while, with every improvement in his instru- ments, he discovers a new system of revolving worlds, each ruling body separated from the other by a distance which the mind of man may in some instances measure, but in none conceive. Astronomy has been rendered so familiar at the present day by the unimpeded progress of education, that every child can construct a solar system, with its orbits, Mercury, Yenus, the Earth, Mars, the asteroides, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, with the diameters of these planets, their comparative densities, their distances from the central Sun, and the time of their periods of revolution round it. Now our own solar system, inconceivably vast as it is, is but an item of this heavenly inventory. Similar systems, discovered by the telescope of Herschel, are here and there suspended in the blue inane, star-dust of the Empyrean, each par- ticle of which would doubtless, under stronger telescopic power, develop into a sun. Yet all this and more forms now part of the common edu- cation of our schools. ' What a new insight is here given of the omni- potence of the Supreme Being ! In our prayers we call him “ Almighty ” and “ Omnipotent ” — terms which by frequent use have come to signify nothing, or nothing clear. What a new meaning is imparted to those familiar words when we know that the farthest and most filmy speck which the most powerful telescope can descry, is but a mass of mighty worlds melted by distance into a dim light, yet comprising individualities as perfect and at the same time as progressive in their natures as our own ! What mean those spots which loom on the horizon of every new instrument ? Are they not glimpses of some far infinitude beyond — a glorious land, of which those specks are but the outlying and subservient sentinels ? The astronomer, using his six-feet mirror, feels as the child, with but another ignorance, the ignorance of knowledge, the knowledge of how much we do not know — the highest form of knowledge here allowed us — and gazes on those dim distant mysterious lights with hope- less wonder and ever-increasing awe. The mind of man shrinks on the threshold of the unattainable. That cloudy spot in Orion is a majestic collection of stars lying at the verge of what is known. If those distant lights resemble at all that cloudy spot, their systems are situated so deep in space that no ray from them could reach our earth till after travelling XX THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS. through intervening abysses during centuries from whose computation even imagination shrinks back abashed ! I turn to Geology. Geology is the science which treats of the mate- rials composing the earth’s crust, their arrangement, and the causes of the|r arrangement. This science may rank, next in importance to that of Astronomy. The materials of the earth’s crust are varied, but invariably known by the name of rocks. By considering the remains imbedded in them, the geologist counts the age of our world. The merest tyro can now distinguish between strata of granite, marble, sandstone, and coal. Obeying the laws of attraction and gravitation, acted on by electrical and chemical agencies, worn down by winds, frosts, rains, and rivers, borne seaward and strewn in layers beneath the waters, and upheaved again by earthquakes and volcanoes, these strata are ever being displaced and altered, and are no exception to that law of action which, as I said, regulates and informs the world. But each alteration of material encloses some relic of vitality. As men in this country place coins under their mighty buildings, to show their successors their age and history, so Nature places her records, too ; and these are the tests or types of the earth’s conditions during their enclosure. The ocean has encroached on the land ; land emerged from the ocean ; fixed hills were once the tiny sandstones on the shore ; and seas roll their waters over the surface of ancient continents. All is action and never-ceasing change. Millions of animals, birds, beasts, and fishes lived and died on this little planet mil- lions of years before man was. Much that I have said of these sciences may be also applied to those of Botany, Mineralogy, and Zoology, about which sciences a varied col- lection of treatises and samples is stored up in the gardens and the museums of this great city. From the close observation of these, any thinking man will find that here also is action and never-ceasing change. Considering these facts and others like them, we can scarcely forbear smiling at the pride of man, who imagines this fair world created for himself alone, and formerly, as I have already said, imagined it the centre of the vast sidereal system of the universe. It is his world, for- sooth — this fair world, which flourished in illustrious glory and beauty long ages before his entrance into it, and will probably continue so to flourish long after every trace of him has perished out of creation. THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS. XXI The application of the laws of motion and progress to objects in nature, or contrivance in arts, constitutes that branch of natural philo- sophy usually treated under the head of mechanics. The original signifi- cation of the word “ machine,” as most are now aware, is simply “ art,” or the means of bringing about an effect. How widely machines have assisted progress, and brought about comfort to mankind, is known both in Hydrostatics, Hydraulics, Pneumatics, and many other subjects. But the greatest triumph of mechanism is the steam-engine — the engine par excellence , which depends on the properties of water and heat alone for its gigantic power. The action of steam in producing motion was known probably as early as 130 b.c. The instrument called the iEolipyle, described by Hero of Alexandria, may be considered the original of our present steam-engine. My readers must not be frightened at the name ; the thing is, I believe, very familiar to them all. It is to be seen, under a different title, indeed, in most of the chemist’s windows and in toy shops of the present day, described as a novel invention — a novelty which dates back more than 2,000 years ! So true is it, as Solomon said, that there is nothing new under the sun. You observe a small glass globe, with two arms or cylindrical tubes attached to it, open at the end. In this globe water is introduced, and on applying heat below the globe gradually rotates, at first slowly, afterwards more and more swiftly, through the steam, which beats like a paddle-wheel upon the air. The ingenious Mr. Bimmel, of the Strand, has, I believe, patented what he calls a “ Steam Vaporizer,” for diffusing perfume. The eye of Science sees in this novel invention nothing but the iEolipyle, which is, as I have said, at least as old as Hero of Alexandria — that is, nearly 2,000 years of age.