38 THE CHEMISTRY OF CEEATION. 



are strongly opposed to each other in their 

 chemical properties. Hydrogen and iron, on 

 the contrary, have little or no disposition to 

 unite, for they exhibit many chemical properties 

 in common. 



Bearing in mind this tendency of every 

 element to unite or combine with its dissimi- 

 lars, we may readily imagine what sad confu- 

 sion would take place in nature if the power 

 which they are thus endowed with were not 

 itself subject to certain fixed rules beyond 

 which it could not operate. To-day, for ex- 

 ample, iron might unite with one element, 

 to-morrow with another; to-day it might be 

 found in one condition, to-morrow in another ; 

 water might be to-day the fluid known to us 

 as such, to-morrow it might be converted into 

 one of another composition, and the third day 

 might be resolved into its constituent gases 

 oxygen and hydrogen, the great ocean, and 

 the seas and rivers disappearing into the air, 

 to the destruction of the animal and vegetable 

 worlds. In a word, it is not too much to say 

 that the entire system of our globe would be 

 speedily broken up, and the elements would 

 return to their original state of confusion or 

 chaos. To obviate such a result, that Almighty 

 Creator, who is not the Author of confusion 

 but of order, has appointed certain fixed laws 



