ll the Niagaras,
Mississippis and Amazons of earth. The sun says to the earth, wrapped
in the mantle of winter, [Page 36] "Bloom again;" and the snows
melt, the ice retires, and vegetation breaks forth, birds sing, and
spring is about us.

Thus it is evident that every force is constitutionally arranged
to be overcome by a higher, and all by the highest. Gravitation of
earth naturally and legitimately yields to the power of the sun's
heat, and then the waters fly into the clouds. It as naturally
and legitimately yields to the power of mind, and the waters of the
Red Sea are divided and stand "upright as an heap." Water naturally
bursts into flame when a bit of potassium is thrown into it, and
as naturally when Elijah calls the right kind of fire from above.
What seems a miracle, and in contravention of law, is only the
constitutional exercise of higher force over forces organized to
be swayed. If law were perfectly rigid, there could be but one
force; but many grades exist from cohesion to mind and spirit.
The highest forces are meant to have victory, and thus give the
highest order and perfectness.

Across the astronomic spaces reach all these powers, making creation
a perpetual process rather than a single act. It almost seems as
if light, in its varied capacities, were the embodiment of God's
creative power; as if, having said, "Let there be light," he need do
nothing else, but allow it to carry forward the creative processes
to the end of time. It was Newton, one of the earliest and most
acute investigators in this study of light, who said, "I seem to
have wandered on the shore of Truth's great ocean, and to have
gathered a few pebbles more beautiful than common; but the vast
ocean itself rolls before me undiscovered and unexplored."

[Page 37]
EXPERIMENTS WITH LIGHT.

A light set in a room is seen from every place; hence light streams
in every possible direction. If put in the centre of a hollow sphere,
every point of the surface will be equally illumined. If put in
a sphere of twice the diameter, the same light will fall on all
the larger surface. The surfaces of spheres are as the squares
of their diameters; hence, in the larger sphere the surface is
illumined only one-quarter as much as the smaller. The same is true
of large and small rooms. In Fig. 7 it is apparent that the light
that falls on the first square is spread, at twice the distance,
over the second square, which is four times as large, and at