it be almost imperceptible. The material world is passing through cycles of decay and restoration, like living organisms on the face of the earth. Our notions of stability formerly arrested this process, but we now discover that the stability is only during one phase in the evolution. There is an organic stability in the seed, the flower, and the fruit of a plant, but it is a stability consistent with development; and one form merges into another. We lose nothing, in a theological point of view, by the recognition of a limit to the stability of the solar and other subordinate systems. The idea of transition only points to a higher argument. The human spirit has long shrunk from the idea of organic changes in the constitution and relations- of the heavenly bodies, just as it shrank from the reception of the Copernican theory of the solar system; but the admission of the former will, as emphatically, redound to the glory of God as that of the latter. The universe regarded as a rhythm and process, instead of an unalterable piece of architecture, only declares more loudly the wisdom of Him who guides and controls it with His ever-present power. The idea of Sir Isaac Newton, that the material universe may be regarded as the sensorium of Deity, savours somewhat of Pantheism; but it was meant by the illustrious philosopher to be in perfect consonance with the full recognition of the Divine personality; and the conception was designed to bring us closer in thought to the living God, who is in all and
