THE MINISTRY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

CHAPTER I.

The Mutations of Nature.

N the presence of the starry heavens the Psalmist felt his own insignificance when he exclaimed, "When I consider the heavens, the works of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou shouldst visit him ?" We are in the habit of speaking of the immutable and ever-youthful heavens, but the fact is nothing is immutable but God; not only organic beings, but inorganic matter, is subject to the law of change, from the hyssop to the cedar, from the monad to the man, from the flower to the star. If we select specimens of rocks, crystalline or stratified; of metals in any of their combinations; of gems glistening with light and glowing with color; if we examine the varied forms and hues of the vegetable world or the more mysterious animal creations, we must inevitably

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come to the conclusion, long since announced, "that dust they are, and to dust they must return." Whatever permanency may be given to matter, it is certain that its form is ever in a state of change. The surface of the "eternal hills" is worn away by the soft rains which fall to fertilize the earth, and from their wrecks, borne by the waters to the ocean, new continents are forming. The mutations of the old earth may be read upon her rocks and mountains, and these records of former changes, tell us the infallible truth that, as the present passes into the future, so will the form of our earth undergo changes in the future as it has in the past. The same forces that lifted the Andes and the Himalayas are still at work, and from the particles of matter carried from the present lands by the rivers to the sea, where they subside in stratified masses, there will, in the great future, be raised new worlds, upon which the work of life will go forward, and over which will be spread a vast intelligence.

If we regard the conditions of the beautiful and varied organic covering of the earth, the certainty, the constancy of change is ever before us; vegetable life passes into the animal form, and both perish to feed the future plant. "Man, moving to-day the monarch of a mighty people, in a few years passes back to his primitive dust, and that combination of elementary atoms which is dignified with the circle of sovereignty and the robe of purple, after a period may be sought for in the herbage of the fields or the humble flowers of the valley. All things visible around us are but aggregations of atoms. From particles of dust which under the microscope could scarcely be distinguished one from the other are all the varied forms.

of nature created. This grain of dust, this particle of sand, has strange properties and powers. Forces, which we cannot by the utmost refinements of our philosophy detect, direct the whole, and from the same dust which formed the rock and grew in the tree is produced a living and a breathing thing, capable of receiving a divine illumination, of bearing in its new state the gladness and glory of a soul."

Thus does physical science, fact, and Revelation represent all nature in a constant state of flux and change; yet running through all there is a permanent principle of order and of life which ensures its stability. The individual dies, but the race lives; one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. The fickleness of the winds, the restlessness of the waves, the motion and falling of the leaf, as well as the revolution of the seasons and the silent marchings of the stars, all impress upon us the same truth. Our sun, with all its attendant planets and satellites, is speeding through space with inconceivable rapidity. Every object in nature seems to have a work to do, and lingers not in its labour till its task is done and the goal is gained. And that goal when gained is but the starting point of fresh forces, principles, and processes, ever pressing forward to some more distant goal, in the remote future, known only to the great Creator-God.

I wave my hand in the air, and by so doing I set mechanical action in motion. The motion, says a scientific writer,* which has apparently ceased, is taken * GROVE, Correlation of the Physical Forces.

up by the air, from the air by the walls of the room, and so by direct and re-acting waves is continually comminuted, but never destroyed.

The flowers of last summer are all faded, but in the coming summer other flowers will spring forth to continue the same form. Amid the perpetual flux and reflux of all individual existence there are forms, forces, and laws which impart to them, and impress upon them, a unity and a perpetual permanence.

The flower has grown under the impulse of principles which have "travelled to it on the sunbeam, from the distance of ninety millions of miles, in order to mingle with its substance. A stone is merely a stone to most men; but within the interstices of the stone, and involving it. like an atmosphere, are great and mighty forces, and powers which are fearful in their grander operations and wonderful in their gentler developments. The stone and the flower hold locked up in their secret recesses the three great known forces-light, heat, and electricity— and in all probability others of a more exalted nature still, to which these powers are but subordinate agents. There are true sermons in stones, and the most musical of tongues in trees.

"How weak are the creations of romance when viewed

beneath the discoveries of science! The spiritual beings which the poets of the ancient world gave to the forest, the valley, and the mountain, to the lake, the river, and the ocean, working within their secret offices, and moulding for man the beautiful and the sublime, are but the weak creations of fancy, although they have for us a charm which all men unconsciously obey.

The sylph moistening a lily is a pretty thought, but the thoughts which rise when first we learn that its broad and beautiful dark-green leaves, and its pure and delicate. flower, are the results of the alchemy which changes gross particles of matter into symmetrical forms, of a power which is unceasingly at work, in Nature's trinity of forces -heat, light, and electricity-moulding, changing alike the shape, color, and substance of the stone as of the flower, of the rock as of the tree, the thoughts which rise in our minds are too deep for words, and before them the creations of fancy grow pale and sickly and expire. One affords matter of ennobling meditation, and lifts the soul from Nature up to Nature's God; the other excites the mind for a moment and then leaves it vacant or diseased."

As all the researches and discoveries of science tend to diminish the number of Nature's acting principles, and are constantly tending to demonstrate that its trinity of forces-light, heat, and motion--are essentially one, so they tend to show, albeit unconsciously to themselves, that Nature is in this respect, as in many others, a material transcript and an intended revelation of its Creator, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a Trinity in unity whom we call "God," and know no more.

But as change and transmutation have been the unchangeable characteristics of our globe and its productions in the past, so in all probability will be its changing conditions in the future. Science and Revelation alike indicate this. "Even now our globe may be but in one stage of its mighty and majestic mutations. Other and mightier changes may be in reserve for it yet; for since it has been already the seat of so much revolution and