THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 269 



the harmonies of old Ocean when contemplated through the 

 microscope ; then every drop of water in the sea is discovered to 

 be in tune with the hosts of heaven, for each stands forth a peopled 

 world. 



498. Tlie microscope and the telescope. — Catching, as we contem- 

 plate the hosts of heaven through the telescope and the moving- 

 creatures of the sea through the microscope, the spirit of Chalmers, 

 and borrowing his fine imagery, let us draw a contrast between 

 the glories of the heavens and the Avonders of the insect world of 

 earth and sea, as to the mind of a devout philosopher they are 

 presented through these instruments : " One leads him to see a 

 Avorld in every atom, the other a system for every star. One 

 shows him that this vast globe, with its mighty nations and mul- 

 titudinous inhabitants, is but a grain of sand in the immensity of 

 space ; the other, that every particle of clay that lies buried in the 

 depths of the sea has been a living habitation, containing within 

 it the workshops of a busy population. One tells him of the 

 insio-nificance of the world we inhabit ; the other redeems it from 

 that insignificance by showing in the leaves of the forest, in the 

 flowers of the field, and in every drop of water in the sea, worlds 

 as numberless as the sands on its shores, all teeming with life, 

 and as radiant with glories as the firmament of heaven. One 

 suggests that, beyond and above all that is visible to man, theie 

 are fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry 

 to the remotest regions of space the impress of the Almighty hand ; 

 the other reminds us that, within and beneath all that minuteness 

 Avhich the qjq of man has been able to explore, there may be a 

 region of invisibles, and that, could we draw aside the veil that 

 hides it from our senses, we should behold a theatre of as many 

 worlds as astronomy has unfolded — a universe within the compass, 

 of a point so small as to elude the highest power of the microscope, 

 but where the wonder-working finger 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 tlie 

 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 struc- 



