Responsibility of Life. 173 forms with a new type. One germ is microscopic, but it develops into a highly organised animal. Another germ, also microscopic, in no wise distinguishable from the other, becomes an animal altogether different. These changes are governed by a deep and wide-reaching law, but we are ignorant of it. Must we say, because of that ignorance— "Law is Fate?" Certainly not. Nature's laws are emanations from the will of God. Our will avails something in the world. God's will avails much more. "The undevout astronomer is mad." Why mad? Because he knows no one better-that the worlds in space are manifestations of a Power to which no limits can be assigned. It is the fundamental truth as to Godhead, and the man of science knows "the heavens declare the glory of God." To tell us we must not worship God because His essence, His energy, His infinity, His eternity, His omnipresence, are incomprehensible, draws forth the reply-"When our intelligence is baffled, when the Infinite confronts us, we worship: were He less, He would not be great enough for our faith and too little for our heart. We do not read the Bible as we read another book. The responsibility is more awful. It is death unto death, or life unto life. As to God, calling Him unknown makes mock of wisdom, but could we fully search Him out we should want one greater. Only the mind that compasseth Perfection is Perfection's equal. "Great God, our littleness takes heart to play Is that Thou art so great." Faber. Not ignorantly measuring the Creator by the creature, we adore Him as that highest absolute Being in whom all possibilities of existence are comprehended. We consecrate memories of the illustrious dead-those who, under God, have made us what we are. We rejoice in that communion of saints, unseen yet real, whose heroic sufferings rise to heaven as a sacred prayer-whose heroic actions are a psalm of praise; and our enthusiasm grows into devotion, reverence, grandeur, when assembled myriads worship. Butler said "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why, then, should we desire to be deceived?" The facts are evidence of a far-extending purpose; every part worked with skill, and assigned to appropriate place. Blind necessity must always and everywhere be an unreasoning thing, cannot produce complex exquisite beauty and order. "If men of piety were also men of science, and if men of science were to read the Scriptures, there would be more faith on the earth and more philosophy."1 We should be led in a more direct and simple way to our wise and loving Father. A true foundation would be laid by knowledge, love, obedience, for happiness in every life; would render beneficent the growing complications of human society; and the study of Nature be more honourable by possessing the dignity of inquiry into the ways of God. Life on our globe is but a single pulsation of life universal. The duration of the planetary system is scarcely more. Life, then, is a small matter; yet, for life the whole scheme seems planned. Countless systems, unless science is at fault, passed through their processes and died out, that our sun and his family might be formed; and countless others will be built when our habitation of life has fallen to ruin. Not suns only, but systems of suns, galaxies of systems, are passing to higher and higher orders —connected with time intervals infinitely great and infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally small as compared with eternity in which they are lost. Infinitely great in comparison with the duration of our earth, and the yet smaller span of its existence as a dwelling for life. Nevertheless, it is at the least "probable that every member of every order—planet, sun, galaxy, and so onward to higher and higher orders endlessly has been, is now, or will hereafter be, lifesupporting "after its kind.'” 2 It is unwisdom to suppose that our earth is the only inhabited orb of the universe; though, when we scan the sky, millions apparently of lifeless worlds are found for every life-sustaining star; and though the life-sustaining condition is a period short indeed as compared with their duration; that life-period is their flower and fruit. The support of life seems Nature's great purpose. Land, 1 Hamilton, "Royal Preacher." 2 "Life in Other Worlds: " Richard A. Proctor. Nature's Great Purpose. 175 In the bitter cold of Arctic water, air, teem with life. regions, with strange alternations of long summer day and long winter night, frozen seas, perennial ice, life has a hundred forms. The torrid zone, blazing with heat, parched with drought, fierce raging hurricanes driving away oppressive calms, contains myriads of living things. Mountain summits, depths of valleys, mid-ocean, warm and salt springs, are all inhabited. No trace remains of millions and millions of primitive creatures in the earliest eras; yet, from the remains of other eras we know that life abounded in the sea, and multitudes fed on the land. Multiplication of life on earth is greatly due to solar agency; and physical laws, like those ruling our planet, are traced everywhere; the unbounded diffusion of sun and star light warrants our faith that there is life in many worlds. The same physical laws operate, far as our science extends, wherever matter is; and we reasonably conclude that moral power exists in every abode of mind. Why may not the universe be aglow with lamplight and hearthlight of many happy homes? Suns are not mere gilded shows, nor blazing points. They are sources whence flows the physical power by which advances are made through low grades of being to high capacity. The universe is a palace of the King, vast in extent and duration, rich with varied existences of intelligent creatures. Our own home is only a hamlet on the side of a great mountain range; but the magnificent bodies of light, scattered over infinite fields of space, worlds and worlds suspended in heights and depths, are palaces of splendour. We think Intelligence, at the very heart of things, is conducting many families in paths of love. Life is not a continual struggle with brute irresistible force, but a process whose work is survival of the best. Our thoughts, when gone, are not dead; or if dead and buried in forgetfulness, God raises them-they live again. "My heart is renewed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on In silence round me--the perpetual work Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed William Cullen Bryant. 66 STUDY XI. DAY III.-CREATION OF PLANTS. "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies; LORD TENNYSON. LET the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth." Plants are organized living beings, void of feeling and voluntary motion. All living organisms are continually receiving additions to their substances, and so long as these exceed in quantity the parts removed, they grow. Growth is by creating power of God to receive nutritive matter, and add it to the structure: that is, integrating the surrounding elements with itself is the law of life. The growth of a plant depends on the abundance and size of the masses of nutriment which it is able to appropriate. Growth has limits, but they are wide apart. At one extreme may be invisible organisms, for certainly there are monads so minute as to be but imperfectly visible even with microscopes of the highest power; at the other extreme are trees of more than four hundred feet in stature. High organisation is not always endowed with great size, nor is the ultimate maximum determined by initial bulk, but the possible extent of growth, other things equal, depends on the organisation. "Who would believe that, did not he every day see it; who can conceive how, although he seeth it; from a little, dry, illfavoured, insipid seed thrown into the earth, there would arise so goodly a plant, endued with exact figure, fragrant smell, Foods, Substances, Functions. 1 177 delicate taste, lively colour? By what engines it attracteth, by what discretion it culleth out, by what hands it mouldeth, its proper aliment; by what artifice it doth elaborate the same so curiously, and incorporate it with itself!" This act of growth, not explainable on any known mechanical principles, is called "vital ;" and the origin is thus stated in Scripture "God causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man (Ps. civ. 14). God, pervading all, is in all the mystery. Food is necessary for this development: carbonic acid taken in by the leaves pari passu with the decomposition of CO2, CO2 + H2O = COH2 + 02. From COH2 the various carbohydrates are built up; while the proteids, which nourish protoplasm, are probably constructed by the plant from a carbohydrate and ammonia, much work is done by means of the root. Carbonic acid, dissolved by the rain in passing through the atmosphere, is produced by the slow decomposition of mould-the carbon of which unites with the oxygen of the air held in solution by the water. A little nitric acid may be formed by the direct oxidation of the air during storms. Ammonia is a product of decay. Carbon is to be specially distinguished: it combines with other elements in manifold relations of number and weight, and with oxygen, hydrogen, specially nitrogen, forms that protein matter which is the staff of all life. Sages thus track the circling maze of cause and effect. The organised substances, formed in the plants, are generally ternary compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. Carbonic acid, ammonia, soluble phosphates, sulphates, supply most of their materials. The alkaline bases, which play an important part in vegetation, reside in the rockswhich must be decomposed and become soil for nourishment. The sum of life is trifles, but the sum is not a trifle. All living things respire, i.e. give off carbonic acid as the result of the wear and tear of tissues. The process is masked in plants by the taking in of a greater quantity of carbonic acid, and by its decomposition. Fungi are, in some respects, like animals: they live on organic food, inhale oxygen and give out carbonic acid. The roots and leaves of the higher plants are widely different in their functions: the roots "A Defence of the Blessed Trinity:" Isaac Barrow, D.D. N |