The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1854-07-12
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THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.

Or all miracles, the most wonderful is
that of life-the common, daily life which
we carry about with us, and which every
where surrounds us. The sun and stars,
the blue armament, day and night, the
pared withit. Life-the soul of the world,
but for which creation were not
1t is our daily familiarity with life
which obscures its wonders from us
We live, yet remember it not. Other
wonders attract our attention, and ex-
cite our surprise but this, the great
wonder of the world, which includes 9th
ers, is little regarded. We have grown
up alongside of life, with life within US
and about us and there is, never any
pain in our existence, at which its phe-
nomena arrest our curiosity and atten-
tion. The miracle is hid from US by fa-
hiliarity, and we see it not. ~
Fancy the earth without life Its
skeleton ribs of rock and mountain un-
clothed by verdure, without soil, and
without flesh! What a naked, des-
olate spectacle, and how unlike the
beautiful aspect of external nature in all
lands Nature, ever-varied and ever
changing-coming with the spring, and
going to sleep with the winter-in con-
slant rotation. The flower springs up,
blooms, withers, and falls, returning to
the earth from which it sprung, leaving
behind it the germs of future being for
nothing dies, not even life, which only
gives up one form to assume another
Organization is travelling in an unending
circle. 80
The trees in summer put on their YER
dure; they blossom their fruit ripens-
falls what the roots gathered up out of
earth returns to earth again; the leaves
drop one by one, and decay, resolving
themselves into new forms, to enter in
to- other organizations the sap flows
back to the trunk; and the forest; wood
field and brake, compose themselves to
their annual winters sleep. In spring
and summer the birds sang in the boughs,
and tended their young brood; the whole
animal kingdom rejoieed in their full
bounding life; the sun shone warm, and
nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter
lays its cold chill upon this scene; but
the same scene comes round again, and
another spring reeommences the same
''never ending, still beginning" success
sion of vital changes. We learn to ex-
pect all this, and become so familiar
with it, that it seldom occurs to us to
reflect how much harmony and adaptation
there.i is in the arrangement much
of beauty and glory there is everywhere,
above, around, and beneath US. - .'-'
But were it possible to conceive an in
telligent being, abstracted from our hu-
manity, endowed with the full possession
of mind and reason, all at once, set
] down on the earth's surface-how many
objects of surprising interest and won
der would at once force themselves on
his attention. The verdant earth, COW
cred with its endless profusion of forms
of vegetable life, from the delicate moss
to the oak which survives the revolutions
of centuries; the insects of the animal
kingdom, from the gnat which dances in
the summer s sun beams up to the higher
forms of sentient being; birds, beasts OF
endless diversity of form, instinct, and
color and, above all, Man" Lord of the
lion heart and eagle eye these would,
to such an intelligence, be source Of
almost endless interest. ~
If tits life which is the grand glory
of the world, it was the consumation Of
creative power, at which the morning
stars sang together for joy Is not the