120 THAT CAUSE IS GOD. 



certain limits, to bring it about. And, just as we ex- 

 pect, when we think over the matter correctly, we 

 find that we can effect the greatest and the most 

 beneficial changes in those things of which we have 

 the most knowledge. Dead substances we can 

 manage the best, because we can in most instances 

 take them to pieces, and in many we can put them 

 together again. Vegetables rank next ; after them 

 animals, and then ourselves in so far as we are 

 material. But, even in the simplest, that is, in the 

 best understood of these cases, we find a boundary 

 which we cannot pass. No art of man, and not any 

 process of nature which we know, can make an eagle 

 graze on the common like a goose ; as little can the 

 lion be made literally to " eat straw with the ox ;" 

 and even in dead matter, we, in every case, come 

 at last (and the road is seldom a long one, though 

 often difficult to find) to substances which we call 

 "simple ;" and as those simples are not convertible 

 the one into the other, and as they are all as neces- 

 sary to the things and appearances of nature as 

 well as the laws are, the whole must have had a 

 simultaneous origin. Whether, therefore, we look 

 at the objects or the events in nature, we are alike 

 convinced that they could not of themselves have 

 begun, but must have had their origin in ONE, and 

 One greater than them all One who knew before 

 any of them was in existence how they all were to 

 act, singly or in concert, and what were to be the 

 whole of their appearances, throughout the entire 

 period of their succession. That is the ultimate 

 lesson which concludes the book of nature ; and if 

 we read that book far enough " with our own eyes," 

 we are sure to arrive at it ; and there is this conso- 

 lation in the matter, that instead of our tiring of it, 

 it ceases to be felt as a task, and becomes play, the 

 moment we enter upon it or, at least, the moment 

 that we become in earnest with it. 

 There are various other principles and properties 



