LIGHT.

Subject proposed by Miss FISHER, Rugby.

THERE are many stars whose light now glimmers for the first time before our eyes, and there may be many more whose light has not yet reached us. Is it, then, the slowness with which light travels, or the immensity of space over which it has to go, that is the occasion of this? Is not the sun millions of miles from us? yet its light reaches us the next moment after that in which it has been calculated to appear above the horizon. So we must revert to the other supposition for an explanation. goes at the rate of 197,916 miles in a second, and how many miles must there be between us and the stars, if their light only reaches us now, after travelling since the creation? But would not the immense velocity with which it travels, and the force which rapidity necessarily gives it, overpower this poor sight of ours and send us

Light

to darkness? It would, were it not for a provision of our God. When he said the sublime sentence, "Let there be light," he saw the evil, and determined what that light should be. It is composed of an infinite number of small globules which give way to every obstruction, and the gradual increase of their rays which we always experience from light, coming in a natural way, strengthens our eyes by degrees, till they are capable of bearing it in its full power; and it is in this, as in all the other of Nature's works, everything that is necessary is to be found, and everything that is unnecessary is not there. The manner in which Light originates from the luminous bodies from which we know it proceeds is a mystery to us; it cannot be solved by human minds; we may reach the surface, but no further can we go; all is mystery; we live, and move, and have our being in mystery. From God to man, and from man to the dust, all is mystery.

MEMORY.

Subject proposed by JOHN HOLMES, Esq., Rathmines, near Dublin.

It is all theory that can be advanced respecting the means by which the signs of the outward world are conveyed from the senses to the mind. It is all supposition as to how the process is carried on, after we lose sight of it, and how the ideas are retained and improved upon by the mind. Yet upon such precarious ground man has ventured to build Babels, which he tries to raise to the summit of truth; but where facts end he is in mystery. Among all the theories, that is the most plausible which supposes, that the nerves effect a communication between the external organs of sense and the sensorium, and the modifications experienced by the sensorium. are the objects of perception to the mind; and thus, through the nerves, the mind produces the idea of that object which occasioned these modifications of the sensorium. Impressions

remain upon the brain after the acting force has departed; and thus the mind after a time, as it were, can look again on them, and recall to mind its former images, and thereby its former ideas. According to the impression on the senses is that on the nerves, and through them on the sensorium; what is strong on one is strong on the rest, and the contrary; therefore, that which interests the senses strongly bears an indelible impression on the sensorium, and that which does not, passes over like a breath of summer wind: and the power by which the sensorium retains these impressions is what we call Memory. That modification of it by which we recall past scenes is designated Recollection.

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What would all the pains we take avail? of what use would all our study and diligence be, if what we learnt went away as it came? should know nothing, save that which we thought of at the present moment, and with the present it departs for ever, giving place to a different subject, to depart in its turn. We could have

no chains of thought, no associations, and the world would be desolate, and man would be a beast. How great, then, is that wisdom which foresaw that necessity in the moment when he called the soul of man into being, and when his eye was upon every living thing, in the millions of worlds subject to his power.

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