When shall we have a Cuvier, a Huxley, a Tyndall for the immaterial world,—­the realm of spiritual existence, moral growth?  Nature is one.  The things which we have clumsily and impertinently dared to set off by themselves, and label as “immaterial,” are no less truly component parts or members of the real frame of natural existence than are molecules of oxygen or crystals of diamond.  We believe in the existence of one as much as in the existence of the other.  In fact, if there be balance of proof in favor of either, it is not in favor of the existence of what we call matter.  All the known sensible qualities of matter are ultimately referable to immaterial forces,—­“forces acting from points or volumes;” and whether these points are occupied by positive substance, or “matter” as it is usually conceived, cannot to-day be proved.  Yet many men have less absolute belief in a soul than in nitric acid; many men achieve lifetimes of triumph by the faithful use and application of Nature’s law—­that is, formula of uniform occurrence—­in light, sound, motion, while they all the while outrage and violate and hinder every one of those sweet forces equally hers, equally immutable, called by such names as truth, sobriety, chastity, courage, and good-will.

The suggestions of this train of thought are too numerous to be followed out in the limits of a single article.  Take, for instance, the fact of the identity of molecules, and look for its correlative truth in the spiritual universe.  Shall we not thence learn charity, and the better understand the full meaning of some who have said that vices were virtues in excess or restraint?  Taking the lists of each, and faithfully comparing them from beginning to end, not one shall be found which will not confirm this seemingly paradoxical statement.

Take the great fact of continuous progressive development which applies to all organisms, vegetable or animal, and see how it is one with the law that “the holy shall be holy still, the wicked shall be wicked still.”

Dare we think what would be the formula in statement of spiritual life which would be correlative to the “law of continuity”?  Having dared to think, then shall we use the expression “little sins,” or doubt the terrible absoluteness of exactitude with which “every idle word which men speak” shall enter upon eternity of reckoning.

On the other hand, looking at all existences as organisms, shall we be disturbed at seeming failure?—­long periods of apparent inactivity?  Shall we believe, for instance, that Christ’s great church can be really hindered in its appropriate cycle of progressive change and adaptation?  That any true membership of this organic body can be formed or annulled by mere human interference?  That the lopping or burning of branches of the tree, even the uprooting and burning of the tree itself, this year, next year, nay, for hundreds of years, shall have power to annihilate or even defer the ultimate organic result?