ess either in physical or
moral nature, we always believe that Order will succeed the momentary
interruption of law. Even when we see earth a prey to the most dreadful
catastrophes, we always regard such a state of things as a _passing_
crisis, destined to return to the law of order. Surrounded as it is from
the cradle to the grave by an infinite variety of phenomena, the human
mind for their investigation devotes itself to the search of a small
number of laws, which will link them all, persuaded there is no
phenomenon or being so rebellious to a correct classification, that its
proper place or role cannot be assigned it in the great system of
Eternal Order. Even the savage believes in the periodic return, in the
constant and regular recurrence of natural phenomena: such convictions
must be based upon an instinctive belief in an Absolute and Universal
Order.

If we turn our gaze upon the Author of all things at the time of the
creation, we will perceive that He must have conceived the grand plan of
the universe as a single or united thought; that He has distributed
being to all that is in different degrees; that He has subjected them
all to the immutable laws of His wisdom; and that the laws under which
they are ranged to receive the Divine action are, in fact, the necessary
conditions of their existence. The more distant the link in the chain of
being is from God, the more are the laws multiplied, divided, ramified,
so as to weave in their vast net that infinite variety which extends to
the utmost limits of creation; but as we approach Him in thought, these
innumerable laws form themselves into groups, these groups are again
resolved into more general laws, until at last we arrive at _one_ which
embraces all the others, to which they are all attached as to a common
centre, and from which they obtain force and direction.

Order is then the entire range of laws which presided at the creation,
and which, linking variety to unity, change to immutability, cause the
circulation of movement, of life, through all the pores of being. Thus
nature and humanity are endowed with an expansive force almost without
limits, and Absolute Order is developing in accordance with regular
progression, in the bosom of which all partial imperfections vanish, and
death itself becomes but a momentary phase of transformation, a mystic
laboratory from which Life flows in a thousand new forms.

The True, the Beautiful, the Good, are only differen