of things, and consider this material
universe in which we live, the great fact of mystery and the need of
faith will be urged upon us by a larger and more impressive teaching.
The more we learn of nature the more clearly is revealed to us this
fact--that we know less than we thought we did; positively, we know
more, but relatively we know less, because as we have advanced nature
has stretched out into wider and wider relations. The department that
was unknown to us yesterday is explored to-day. Yesterday, we thought
it was all that remained to be explored, but the torch of investigation
that guided us through it now flares out upon new regions we did not
see before. Like one who goes with a candle into some immense cavern,
presently a little circle becomes clear, the shadows vanish before him,
and undefined forms grow distinct, he thinks he is near the end, when
lo! what seemed a solid boundary of rock dissolves and floats away into
a depth of darkness, the path opens into an immense void, new shapes of
mystery start out, and he learns this much that he did not know before,
that instead of being near the end, he is only upon the threshold. We do
not mean to imply by this that we have no positive knowledge, or that
we do not increase in knowledge. With every new discovery we positively
know more and more. But the new discovery reveals the fact that more is
yet to be known; it lays open new regions, it unfolds new relations that
we had not before suspected.

We follow some tiny thread a little way, and hold it secure, but it is
connected with another ligament, and this branches out into a third; and
instead of exhausting the matter, we find ourselves at the root of an
infinite series, of an immense relationship, upon which we have only
just opened; and yet what we have is positive knowledge, is something
more added to our stock. The circle of the known has positively widened,
but the horizon of the unknown has widened also, and, instead of being
to us now, as it seemed some time ago, a solid and ultimate limit, it
is only an ethereal wall, only to us a relative boundary, and behind are
infinite depths and mystery. Our scientific knowledge at the present day
reaches this grand result--it clears up the deception that the system
of nature is mere flat, dead materiality, a few mechanical laws, a few
rigid forms. It shows that these are only the husks, the outer garments
of mighty forces of subtile, far-reaching agencies; and