50 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



influence upon the many chemical processes of 

 nature? We may spend profitably a few mo- 

 ments in glancing at these three principles, upon 

 which so much depends in the beautiful world 

 around us. 



It is very remarkable that in the sublime, 

 Divinely-inspired account which Moses has 

 been authorized to give us of the Creation, }t 

 is related that the first step was the creation of 

 Light. " And God said, Let there be light : 

 and there was light." Thus showing us the 

 infinite importance that this principle bears to 

 all .created things. Light is even now abso- 

 lutely necessary to life, not less so than then, 

 when its first beams darted upon a yet un- 

 fashioned world "without form and void." 

 To every animal and plant, and equally to man, 

 the monarch of creation himself, light is indis- 

 pensable, and is^ inseparably connected with 

 health, motion, and activity. What a gloomy 

 world were ours if a deep canopy of black over- 

 hung the sky, leaving its inhabitants in dark- 

 ness and the shadow of death ! Unhappy 

 persons, for offences of a political ' kind, have 

 been long immured in prisons where no ray of 

 light ever stole to enliven the solitude and horror 

 of their dungeon, and the result has been in- 

 variably that such persons become of a death-like 

 paleness, and lose every power both of mind 



