The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1881-04-06

LIZ ONE Will emp OH piece Oh granite,
and look at it with the microscope, he
will be amazed at the beauty and intri
cacy of its chambers. In the case of
many rocks (and it would be true of all,
perhaps, if our instruments were power
full enoug h to reveal it), he will find them
put together according to certain math-
ematical law, with their crystalised
prisms, or pyramids, or cubes. He will
find the same materials, or one single
material, governed, as it were, at different
times. by different impulses, and combin-
ing on variable principles. According to
the conditions under which it originated,
ne will see the simple white pebble
which is so abundant in the valleys of
our East Virginia rivers, assuming
multitude of new and beautiful forms -
IN turn the pellucid rock-crystal, the
violet amethyst, the crimson carne-
liam, the clouded agate, the red and yell
low jasper, the blood stained heliotrope,
the milky opal, the honey -colored fints
of Pressigny-le-grand. BY some touch
of divine alchemy he will see bit OF
charred wood converted into the flashing
diamond, or the plastic ingredient in our
common clay transmitted into the blue
sapphire or the yet more precious oriental
ruby. If our observer lifts his eyes to
higher order of substances, he will find
another realm of nature marked by the
reign Of LIFE. In the vegetable world
he will see the breathing, growing, self
repeating plant, covering the earth with
It's vesture of green and its cooling shades,
and marking the forests and fields with
its many-tinted and exquisite flowers.
Rising higher, he finds EARTH air, and
sea swarming with animal life, from mi
croscopic to leviathan forms. And if he
pauses fer an instant before one of these
living objects, he will find it piece of
incomprehensibly ingenious and intricate
workmanship; with its cells, juices, mem
branes, bones, cartilage, tendons, canals,
teeth, nerves, and organs with its con-
trivances to procure, masticate, and di-
gest its food with its network of veins
and tactical tubes to convert its nutriment
into blood; with the blood, issuing from
its capital, the heart, and exploring every
recess of the body, at once as purveyor
and scavenger, to supply and carry off
what is needed or what should be cast
out; with its lungs supplying the blood,
fot Tod Aa 81 &c h. - I,
fresh oxygen, and sending it again by
the arteries to run its life-sustaining
course; with its glands, follicles, and
pores for the purposes Of secretion and
excretion; with its superb anatomical
machinery for walking, running, leap
ing, climbing, flying, swimming with its
nervous system, conveying its messages
from the external world to the brain,
and revealing to the soul the forms, colors,
sounds, position, and general characters,
of the objects which environ it and,
finally, browning all in MAN the intangi-
bic and invisible presidency of the IN
TELLECT and CONSCIENCE.
Let our observer look again He will
find the apparently level earth on which
he walks, suspended in the air, and Sc
cured by an invisible but resistless thread
to centre around which it moves with
some half dozen other similar planetary
bodies he will find that this earth has
been the theatre on which countless gen