classes of facts requires similar operation for their continuance 

 to that required for their original production. We cannot 

 conceive of force but as a personal act ; our idea of it is 

 derived solely from the effort necessary on our part to produce 

 motion; and, as we find that motion does not belong to 

 matter, either in the atom or the mass, but is superimposed, 

 so continued action is necessary from the original source 

 for its continuance. We are unable to think of continued 

 motion without continued energy. And, when we attempt 

 to calculate the sum of the motion which is going on 

 every moment in the universe, we find ourselves as utterly 

 unable to approach a true result as we are to attain to an 

 adequate idea of the mode of creation out of nothing. Yet 

 there the motion is as a necessity of universal existence, and 

 there, at its back, is the energy or force which is its cause : 

 too vast and too wonderful for our comprehension. 



But there is one side of this question of which we must 

 not lose sight. We are evidently not in in an orphaned, 

 a forsaken world ; but we have present with us everywhere 

 the hand that formed, now sustaining all things. 



This incessant operation is necessary for the continued 

 renewal of the earth as the habitation of man. Without day 

 and night, summer and winter, the disintegrating atmosphere, 

 and rain and frost, the fertility of the earth could not be 

 preserved, and its utility to man would cease; and we find 

 ourselves unable to increase its utility but by taking advan- 

 tage of the order first established, and by working on the 

 same lines, after the manner of the miller who diverts the 

 stream to his own wheel. He cannot create the stream, he 

 can originate no force, but only employ what the great 

 Operator has already provided. In like manner, all recupera- 

 tive operation is not of human origin, but is simply the 

 application of recuperative power lying ready to hand by the 

 prolific providence of the Author of all. 



Life requires certain conditions. The most elementary 

 vegetable cannot exist without light and water. The animal 

 must have organised substances for his food, and a properly- 

 mingled atmosphere to breathe. Small changes in either are 

 i'atal. The world is full of life, full beyond possibility of 

 numbering, and it does not fail. If we were able to form a 

 judgment, we should incline rather to the conclusion that it 

 has been increasingly abundant from the beginning. But if 

 we cannot enumerate the lives, or even the varieties of life, how 

 much more are we unable to tell all the observation, and the 

 care, and the varied and constant operation which have 

 been necessary from the beginning to perpetuate it. 



