Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/37

Rh just arriving, and leisurely watch the actual progress of events.

These curious relations of space and time, as linked together by the laws of light, sufficiently show how the properties of matter may aid the spirit, in a future state of being, in obtaining a wide and comprehensive view of the works and the providence of God. Matter and force, as far as we know, are indestructible, and time itself, the most perishable, in one sense, of all things, is, in another, indestructible too. It can be recalled, as we have seen, and forced again to do duty, by repeating the events of the past.

When we step from planet to sun, from sun to system, and from system to firmament, we are ascending the rounds of the ladder that leads up to the Infinite; and this is the great end of the book of God in the heavens. But a hard-featured philosophy comes, and tells us that we cannot know the Infinite, that the notion we form is merely a synthesis of finites, that no number of finites can ever make an infinite; and that this arises from the very limits of thought. This is true, if it means merely that we cannot construe to our minds the image of an infinite ladder, by indefinitely increasing the rounds of it; but surely we can know a thing, though we cannot draw a definite picture of it to the eye or the imagination. We can, in like manner, know the Infinite and the Eternal, though we cannot construe to our