1-44 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



scopist, for without his instrument they would certainly 

 have remained unknown. Nothing can exceed their great 

 beauty, though many are not so large as the point of the 

 finest needle. 



Look at this, and this. Here is another Arach- 

 noidiscus (that is, the spider-web disc) : does it not 

 remind us again of our spider-story? And do you not 

 admire the structure of this wonderful skeleton of a uni- 

 cellular plant? for it is nothing more, the fleshy portion 

 having been removed by nitric acid ? It is formed entirely 

 of flint, and is a very interesting episode in the story of a 

 pebble. Huge volumes have been, and will continue to 

 be, written about these wonderful plants. " They open up 

 to us the infinitude of microscopic life ; they reveal a vast 

 and glorious realm of new creative design, whose limits 

 can never be fathomed, and whose mysteries can never be 

 exhausted by man's finite researches. It is not so much 

 what they actually disclose that awes and astonishes us, 

 as the bewildering boundlessness of the unknown arcana 

 beyond, to which they point. The vast additions which 

 they have made to our knowledge have only left the 

 immensity of the universe of life greater and more mys- 

 terious than before. For it is almost certain that, if our 

 vision could be made more piercing, and our instruments 

 more perfect, while we explored onwards through the 

 successive realms of the invisible towards the inmost 

 shrine of nature, we should find new scenes of wonder 

 and beauty continually unfolding themselves, and new 

 fields of omniscient display constantly revealing to us 

 that God was still before us in all His exhaustless, 

 creative energy, and that we saw but ' the hidings of His 

 power.' " 



These are the beautifully expressed thoughts of a 

 devout student of science, the author of " Bible Teachings 



