“Science was Faith once; Faith were science now,
  Would she but lay her bow and arrows by,
  And aim her with the weapons of the time.”

Faith laid her bow and arrows by before men in pursuit of worldly knowledge discovered theirs.

What becomes of the force of the sun that is being spent to-day?  It is one of the firmest rocks of science that there can be no absolute destruction of force.  It is all conserved somehow.  But how?  The sun contracts, light results, and leaps swiftly into all encircling space.  It can never be returned.  Heat from stars invisible by the largest telescope enters the tastimeter, and declares that that force has journeyed from its source through incalculable years.  There is no encircling dome to reflect all this force back upon its sources.  Is it lost?  Science, in defence of its own dogma, should [Page 240] assign light a work as it flies in the space which we have learned cannot be empty.  There ought to be a realm where light’s inconceivable energy is utilized in building a grander universe, where there is no night.  Christ said, as he went out of the seen into the unseen, “I go to prepare a place for you;” and when John saw it in vision the sun had disappeared, the moon was gone, but the light still continued.

Science finds matter to be capable of unknown refinement; water becomes steam full of amazing capabilities:  we add more heat, superheat the steam, and it takes on new aptitudes and uncontrollable energy.  Zinc burned in acid becomes electricity, which enters iron as a kind of soul, to fill all that body with life.  All matter is capable of transformation, if not transfiguration, till it shines by the light of an indwelling spirit.  Scripture readers know that bodies and even garments can be transfigured, be made astrapton (Luke xxiv. 4), shining with an inner light.  They also look for new heavens and a new earth endowed with higher powers, fit for perfect beings.

When God made matter, so far as our thought permits us to know, he simply made force stationary and unconscious.  Thereafter he moves through it with his own will.  He can at any time change these forces, making air solid, water and rock gaseous, a world a cloud, or a fire-mist a stone.  He may at some time restore all force to consciousness again, and make every part of the universe thrill with responsive joy.  “Then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands.”  One of these changes is to come to the earth. [Page 241] Amidst great noise the heaven shall flee, the earth be burned up, and all their forces be changed to new forms.  Perhaps it will not then be visible to mortal eyes.  Perhaps force will then be made conscious, and the flowers thereafter return our love as much as lower creatures do now.  A river and tree of life may be consciously alive, as well as give life.  Poets that are nearest to God are constantly hearing the sweet voices of responsive feeling in nature.