pale-faced modern Faust, working in his
laboratory, makes metals out of clay and many marvellous
combinations. What they will do when skilfully proportioned and
exposed to heat, the story related gives a hint,--accounting, as it
were, for the forces at work in space, creating heat and
electricity, making suns burn with indescribable fury, colliding
with peaceful planets, mixing their metals in a second of
time,--and new worlds seem to leap into vision, balls of molten
fire sweeping through space; vast cyclones of flame, making Pelee a
cold-storage vault by comparison. All this seems simple enough as
explained by modern chemistry, giving men unlimited power, making
them gods, as it were, to first master themselves and then the
universe."

This description of the new force, whose intensity is almost beyond
realization, is hardly less remarkable than is the energy described; and
it lends itself, with perfect rhythm of correspondence, to analysis on
the side of the spiritual forces of life. "Cast thyself into the will of
God and thou shalt become as God" is one of the most illuminating of the
mystic truths. The "will of God" is the supreme potency, the very
highest degree of energy, in the spiritual realm, which is the realm of
cause, while the outer world is the realm of effects. Now if one may so
ally himself to the divine will as to share in its all-conquering power,
he partakes of creative power and eternal life, now and here, just in
proportion to the degree to which he can identify his entire trend of
desire and purpose with this Infinite will. This energy is fairly
typified in the physical world by the stupendous new force called
"thermite," and it is as resistless as that attraction which holds the
stars in their courses and the universe in their solar relations.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Diviner Possibilities.]

It is a fallacy to suppose that it is a hardship and a trial to live the
more divine and uplifting life, and that ease and pleasure are only to
be found in non-resistance to the faults and defects of character. The
truth is just the opposite of this, and the twentieth century will
reveal a fairly revolutionary philosophy in this respect. Heretofore
poet and prophet have always questioned despondently,--

"Does the road wind up hill all the way?"

as if to wind up hill were the type of trial, and the "descent