themselves; granite and minerals made themselves; oceans, trees, fish, birds, beasts, and man were self-created. Absurd, foolish, contemptible! Those orbs must have been created by architect and workmen for an object; as much as any mechanism is invented and produced on earth by man. Call the workmen angels, or archangels, if you will; any name given developes no Being large enough, intellectual enough, for us to grasp his appearance, as a workman for the creator of worlds. But this is obvious; if we cannot comprehend the work, we need not wonder at not being able to comprehend the workers. Pyramids, in composition, size, and shape, give us no idea of the texture, form, and intellectual powers of the workmen who created them, or of the designer who planned them. By parallel reasoning, the one is as hidden as the other; yet they existed, and produced their work.

One important and vital portion of heaven's wonders is the COMETARY. Lately we saw a wonder in those heavens-Light streaming many millions of miles in space, travelling at the rate of about 2,500 miles per second-light so transparent, though thousands of miles thick, that stars could be seen through it; it had no solid body, though impelled or drawn at such a speed. How came it into existence? what is it composed of? what are its duties? where is its birth-place? what space will it travel before it returns? These are questions which show the finite powers of man, great as those powers undoubtedly are. The comet of 1680, to us one of the first magnitude, can only effect one revolution after a flight of five hundred and seventy-five years, at the rate of 880,000 miles an hour; others in their varied shapes and periods obey their law of speed and distance, as regularly as the earth performs its allotted task. I refer to Comets, because of their being a part of this universe of wonders, and because their light, will be useful as a substance and explanation of certain phenomena yet to be examined. Nay, more, I conceive that a Comet is the connecting link between Body

C

and Spirit. Of the truth of this proposition more hereafter. Would we could stand on some spot in the uplands of space— look down on those bright, glorious things of light, speeding their rounds with spiral energy and sweep-toning, in their courses, the atmospheres of the stars or worlds, as positives to negatives: so subtile, yet so powerful; so thick, and yet so thin; so material, so immaterial; so much of substance in the head, and yet so much of nothing-nothing at least to those who assert that solid earth is the material, the parent of all, that the phenomena on and around the earth are the products of Earth and that all flow from it, and nothing to it. For the present, let us quit comets, and take a passing glance at the composition of Worlds. The telescope has enabled the astronomer to perceive, through the luminous atmosphere which surrounds them, that they are solid, having their mountains and their valleys-that in the moon volcanos exist and also terrific mountains, many of them perpendicular on their sides as walls of masonry-that in the valleys are to be seen huge blocks of rocks scattered about; but no water-no evidence of life-that the scorching sun, pouring for hours on the surface, would wither, dry up rivers, and annihilate life: It may be it may not be. When I read works issued by noted men of science, instructing the people and referring to the popular idea of there being heat in moonbeams, but asserting that not the slightest indication of heat is manifest; therefore, moonlight has no heat, I pause in tacking my faith to the girdle of the astronomer, because a series of experiments made in 1844 by Baron Reichenbach, of Vienna, he taking life matter, as instruments, instead of dead; discovered the fact that the rays from the moon were warm, and the rays from the sun cold. These facts are cold-shouldered by the teachers of the present day, and strike at the root of several received theories, the annunciation of which have given their authors a niche in the temple of fame; but the breaking down of which makes them weak like other men. As sun rays are cold, if

3

united to certain gaseous These views of the chemithe different results which

there be absent from the moon's surface the something-say oxygen-which chemicalizes the rays on earth, then its sun may light, but not scorch up; or, a minute portion of that earth's something would be sufficient to light and gently warm beings possessed of life on the moon; rendering water or a vapoury atmosphere unnecessary. This is no idle whim or fancy: test it by ascending Mont Blanc; you then are nearer the sun than when in the valley, but why surrounded with perpetual snow if the rays are hot? Again, test it by passing sun rays through a piece of ice: the rays have not dissolved the ice, but have set fire to the paper placed beneath it. Sun rays, therefore, are only scorching when particles in the lowlands of earth. cal sympathy between worlds, and must flow from the absence of any one chemical in a planet or its satellite, open up the reasons why life may be in existence, and be sustained there with as much ease as life on earth. Who can limit the Deity in the creation of tubes, muscles, framework, respiratory instruments for any kind of air he chooses? Look at fish: if we had never seen one, could we have conceived of life in a substance like water? Test it by our own feelings and habits, and the thing is absurd. But I have no desire to pursue the idea further at present, and it is introduced here to show that judgment is often passed on questions before the whole bearings of the subject are before the judge; and that the masses of people unable, by their attention to other matters, to devote their time and intellect to examine and test; accept on trust any declarative decision-take for granted, and often are misled. I would roam longer among the stars, and refresh your mind with the astounding discoveries of the astronomer-some old, but ever fresh; some new, and known to a mortal here and there; but I must leave them, having only taken a bird's-eye view of the universe, to show its relation, its affinity to Earth-Earth with its minerals and metals, its oceans, its atmospheres, its verdure, its fish and its birds,

L

its beasts and its Men; so that we may the more clearly perceive cause and effect, more efficiently analyse the body of Earth and find its soUL; and having found, search again, to see if there be not intelligence or SPIRIT in existence, acting in and with that amalgamation of particles called MAN.

SECTION III.

EARTH, OR BODY.

EARTH is a body in various degrees of pulverization; in the interstices of which, appear to be lodged substances which have risen in, or as vapour from, the interior of the earth, and condensed as minerals; and others appear as if absorbed from external or ethereal elements, and by the laws of affinity and repulsion, clinging to, incorporating themselves with, or avoiding substances in the solid. To enter into an elaborate proof of that which our reader knows to exist, is unnecessary; and therefore we refer to the solid earth as a body, and as the bearer up of bodies of a more refined character. It is the relation of these to the earth which induces us to take earth as the representative of all bodies, whatever may be their peculiar qualities, as organic, or inorganic; and produce them as need requires, as illustrations of the several sections of thought which have to come under our examination. It is therefore with the qualities, and not the weights, of those bodies which we have at present to trace and examine, though the solid has to be individualized to form a basis for the examination of those qualities. So intimate is the one with the other, that it is impossible, or almost impossible, to rest on earth without feeling it is merely a foothold for the examination of existences and developments; that it is merely the matrix of powers beyond itself. Earth is seen as a ball 8000 miles in diameter; but it is governed and propelled by an unseen power, a power by some called gravitation, by others called magnetism; therefore, in tracing the elements, we may have to wind in, out, and round the solid, as knowledge leads us towards the future we have in view.

Earth is the mother of verdure: the cold subtile rays of the sun pierce the soul, or atmosphere, above the solid, and change the chemical properties of both. Life nestles in the earth, and