The worlds and the Word speak but one language, teach but one set of truths.  How was it possible that the writers of the earlier Scriptures described physical phenomena with wonderful sublimity, and with such penetrative truth?  They gazed upon the same heaven that those men saw who ages afterward led the world in knowledge.  These latter were near-sighted, and absorbed [Page 245] in the pictures on the first veil of matter; the former were far-sighted, and penetrated a hundred strata of thickest material, and saw the immaterial power behind.  The one class studied the present, and made the gravest mistakes; the other pierced the uncounted ages of the past, and uttered the profoundest wisdom.  There is but one explanation.  He that planned and made the worlds inspired the Word.

Science and religion are not two separate departments, they are not even two phases of the same truth.  Science has a broader realm in the unseen than in the seen, in the source of power than in the outcomes of power, in the sublime laws of spirit than in the laws of matter; and religion sheds its beautiful light over all stages of life, till, whether we eat or whether we drink, or whatsoever we do, we may do all for the glory of God.  Science and religion make common confession that the great object of life is to learn and to grow.  Both will come to see the best possible means, for the attainment of this end is a personal relation to a teacher who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

[Page 247] XII.

THE ULTIMATE FORCE.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things became by him, and without him was not anything made that was made * * * and by him all things stand together.”

[Page 248]
 “O thou eternal one; whose presence blight
  All space doth occupy—­all motion guide—­
  Thou from primeval nothingness didst call
  First chaos, then existence.  Lord, on thee
  Eternity had its foundation:  all
  Sprung forth from thee—­of light, joy, harmony,
  Sole origin:  all life, all beauty thine. 
  Thy word created all, and doth create;
  Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine;
  Thou art and wert, and shalt be glorious, great;
  Life-giving, life-sustaining Potentate,
  Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround—­
  Upheld by thee, by thee inspired with breath.” 
                                     DERZHAVIN.

[Page 249] XII.

THE ULTIMATE FORCE.

The universe is God’s name writ large.  Thought goes up the shining suns as golden stairs, and reads the consecutive syllables—­all might, and wisdom, and beauty; and if the heart be fine enough and pure enough, it also reads everywhere the mystic name of love.  Let us learn to read the hieroglyphics, and then turn to the blazonry of the infinite page.  That is the key-note; the heavens and the earth declaring the glory of God, and men with souls attuned listening.