THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 149 



everywhere terminates in death ; through the appointed instrumental- 

 ity of this agent, new life as constantly springs from its ashes. 



Oxygen, therefore, performs the office of restorer as well as de- 

 stroyer. It is the Vishnu as well as Siva of the Hindoo triad, and, in 

 nature, its action in hoth capacities is a beneficent one. 



On the products of man's labor, however, its agency is less kindly. 

 These, so far as tliey consist of materials capable of entering into union 

 with it, gradually waste away under its influence, like the dead forms 

 of plants and animals. Iron, subserving so many and so important 

 uses, entering so largely not only into the construction of the tools 

 and implements of the mechanic arts, but into the products of these 

 arts — iron, exposed to the combined influence of air and water, quickly 

 begins to corrode, and, in spite of its strong bands of cohesion, soon 

 crumbles into dust. Implements and structures of brass are scarcely 

 more enduring. Wood, and everything formed of it or reared from 

 it, yield to the same law of decay. " Dust thou art, and unto dust 

 thou shalt return," is written not only of man himself, but of all, 

 even the most enduring of his works. Even in that strange land 

 where the finger of time touches with such marvellous lightness, the 

 most strenuous and persevering eflbrts to resist this law of decay have 

 proved unavailing. The pyramid and the obelisk crumble, while 

 "Miriam cures wounds and Pharaoh is sold for balsam." Man's 

 only hope of immortality must come from his higher, his spiritual 

 nature ; that acknowledges not corruption as its father ; that is un- 

 changing, exempt from all touch of decay, immortal, eternal, like the 

 Great Being in whose image it was formed. But it is a law of all 

 material, all earthy, all sublunary things, to change, moulder, decay, 

 pass away ; and the great principle, or agent, or instrument of this 

 decay, this dissolution, is oxygen, whose office and ministry in nature 

 ire have this evening been contemplating. 



