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be raised incorruptible;"-these alone should be sufficient to deter the theological expositor from propounding ideas so gross in regard to the changes we are to undergo at that mysterious time. That which is formed of matter, such as circulates in living beings now, can neither be a spiritual body, nor free from the changes which are commonly implied by the word corruption.

2o. Again, the moral lesson is not unimportant which this steady but unceasing movement of the material particles of living bodies holds up to us. No stoppage long hinders it. No delay diverts its attention or causes it to forget its duty. Like the stone which we suspend in the air, it is ready to drop the instant the cord snaps by which it is upheld. Is all senseless matter to be thus perpetually labouring,—and are we intelligent beings to idle away a precious but limited life? To work while we live, is one of the moral lessons which the chemist reads in the movements, so plain to him, in apparently dead rocks and earth and air, not less than in the lifeless bodies of the animal and the plant.

3o. But they teach him also to work steadily and with a view to a definite and useful end. In contemplating the moving wheels I have one after another introduced to my readers, they must have felt inclined to stop and ask respecting each, "Why does this wheel turn? Why its unceasing restlessness? What purpose is effected, or is intended to be effected, by its endless revolution?" Generally the answer is, that the maintenance of life, animal and vegetable, depends, as in a complicated piece of mechanism, upon the perpetual movement of all the wheels at once. In detail, the special answer is, that the turning of each wheel determines the comfortable discharge of one or more of the necessary functions of animal and vegetable life.

When, for example, the plant seems only to be amusing itself in forming starch and vegetable fat from carbonic acid and water and the animal, in merely undoing what the plant

This

has done-re-converting the starch and fat again into car bonic acid and water-an unseen effect is being produced at the same time, which is indispensably necessary to the continuance of animal life, as it is now constituted. The change which the starch and fat undergo in the animal body-as well as the final change which the gluten consumed by the animal undergoes-is a kind of burning. The heat produced by this burning is imparted to the body and keeps it warm; and the necessity of such internal warmth to the maintenance of animal life is familiar to every one. wise purpose, therefore, is served, by the way as it were, while the little wheel is turning by which carbonic acid and water alternately disappear in starch and fat, and alternately appear again in their gaseous and liquid forms. And so, were we curiously to inquire what physiological or other ef fects are produced during the turning of any other of our wheels, either great or small, we should see good coming out of each-a beneficent provision for the comfort of living animals, or for the healthy growth of vegetable forms, accompanying the sensible and chemical results of each revolution In this the chemist reads the lesson that his ever-moving activity should have reference to a definite and good end.

4°. It is especially beautiful, as well as interesting, to see how clearly the consideration above presented exhibits the plant as the servant of the animal. Man placed upon the earth, without the previous existence of the plant, were utterly helpless. He could not live either upon the earth or upon the air, and yet his body requires a constant supply of the elements contained in both. It is the plant which selects, collects, and binds together these indigestible materials, manufacturing them into food for man and other animals. And these only throw back again to their toiling slaves the waste or dead materials which they cannot further use, to be worked up by them anew into palatable and nutritious food. In this aspect, the plant appears only as the appoint

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ed bond-servant of the animal; and yet, how willing, how beautiful, how interesting a slave it is! It works unceasingly, yet it is self-tasked. It toils itself to death, yet, punctually as spring comes round, it rises again in a new life-young, beautiful, and willing as ever, rejoicing to renew its destined toil. There is in it none of the bitterness of human slavery to render the task unsweet. In this, too, there is a lesson for us.

5o. And it is not the least striking of the reflections to which this subject leads us, that an alteration in the natural constitution of things of so small a kind as to be inappreciable to our senses, would at once insure the certain extinction of animal and vegetable life. Let the All-powerful order that the minute proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere should be removed, and in a single hour vegetation would droop-in a single week, probably, not a plant would remain alive on the whole face of the dry land! And yet the human organs would perceive no change in the nature of the atmosphere, and the mass of mankind would first wonder at the fatal plague which had so suddenly stricken all vegetable forms, and after a brief period of stupefied and undefined dread, they, too, would perish as the plants had done, for want of sustenance,

6o. This thought again leads us to the contemplation of those purely mechanical motions in which the heavenly bodies continually exercise themselves, without, as a consequence, undergoing any sensible chemical change of matter. On first becoming acquainted with the chemical revolutions of matter above described, we might be inclined-indeed it is a very natural first sight question-to ask, What have these earthy revolutions which concern us so much-what have they in common with the majestic movements of satellites and planets in their orbits, and with that of systems in the ethereal space? What part do these lesser revolutions ---annual many of them, like that of the earth round the sun

-what part do they play in the system of the universe? The humbling answer is, that they take no sensible part in them at all.

The supposition of an insensible removal of the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, and a consideration of its consequences, show that the existence of life, either vegetable or animal, is not a necessary condition of things even on our globe. With an atmosphere so changed the earth might roll on in its place in the solar system-its attendant moon still encircling it-for countless ages, without the change deranging, or even altering in any degree, the most insignificant phenomenon which is nightly seen in the starry heavens. Earthly life, therefore, has no share in the general system of the universe. It is a little episode, so to speak, in the great poem of creation. The Deity willed that this corner of His vast work should be the theatre of new displays of wisdom, of consummate contrivance, of a wonderful fitting-in of means to the accomplishment of beneficent ends, and at last the seat of an intellectual being, with capacity to study and comprehend and admire His works-to praise, and love, and serve Him. It is solely on this seemingly separate act of His will that we depend "for life, and breath, and all things."

And in thinking over this insignificance of man, and all his contemporary forms of life," how awful does it appear, that, in the event of a necessity arising, all this life could be stopped at once-by the simple turning of a screw, as it were-and that the disappearance of all our race would, to the physical universe, be of as little moment as the crushing of the tiny insects, to which all the world they know is but a drop of water!-This is the crowning lesson of all.

INDEX.