§ 499 THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 269 



elude the highest power of the microscope, but where the won- 

 der-working linger of the Almighty finds room for the exercise of 

 his attributes — where He can raise another mechanism of worlds, 

 filling and animating them all with the evidences of His glory.' 

 When we lay down the microscope, and study the organisms of 

 the sea by the light of reason, we find grounds for the belief that 

 the sea was made salt in the beginning, for the marine fossils that 

 are found nearest the foundation of the geological column remind 

 us that in their day the sea was salt ; and then, when we take up 

 the microscope again to study the foraminiferse, the diatomes, and 

 corallines, and examine the structure of the most ancient inhab- 

 itants of the deep, comparing their physiology with that of their 

 kindred in the fossil state, we are left to conjecture no longer, but 

 are furnished with evidence and proof the most convincing and 

 complete that the sea is salt from a physical necessity. 



499. Thus we behold sea-shells and animalculas in a new light. 

 Sea-shells and ani- Mav WO not uow ccasc to regard them as beings 



malculiB in a new . ti t • t • • • • 



light. which have little or nothing to do m maintaining 



the harmonies of creation ? On the contrary, do we not see in 

 them the principles of the most admirable compensation in the 

 system of oceanic circulation ? We may even regard them as reg- 

 ulators, to some extent, of climates in parts of the earth far re- 

 moved from their presence. There is something suggestive, both 

 of the grand and the beautiful, in the idea that, while the insects 

 of the sea are building up their coral islands in the jDcrpetual sum- 

 mer of the tropics, they are also engaged in dispensing warmth to 

 distant parts of the earth, and in mitigating the severe cold of the 

 polar winter. Surely an hypothesis which, being followed out, 

 suggests so much design, such perfect order and arrangement, and 

 so many beauties for contemplation and admiration as does this, 

 which, for want of a better, I hav.e ventured to ofier with regard 

 to the solid matter of the sea water, its salts and its shells — sure- 

 ly such an hypothesis, though it be not based entirely on the re- 

 sults of actual observation, can not be regarded as wholly vain or 

 as altogether profitless. 



