RESISTING MEDIUM. 203 



have the sentence "to end" stamped upon their 

 foreheads. They enjoy no privilege beyond man 

 except a longer respite. The ephemeron perishes 

 in an hour ; man endures for his three score 

 years and ten ; an empire, a nation, numbers its 

 centuries, it may be its thousands of years ; 

 the continents and islands which its dominion 

 includes, have perhaps their date, as those which 

 preceded them have had ; and the very revolu- 

 tions of the sky by which centuries are numbered 

 will at last languish and stand still. 



To dwell on the moral and religious reflexions 

 suggested by this train of thought is not to our 

 present purpose ; but we may observe that it 

 introduces a homogeneity, so to speak, into the 

 government of the universe. Perpetual change* 

 perpetual progression, increase and diminution, 

 appear to be the rules of the material world, and 

 to prevail without exception. The smaller por- 

 tions of matter which we have near us, and the 

 larger, which appear as luminaries at a vast dis- 

 tance, different as they are in our mode of con- 

 ceiving them, obey the same laws of motion ; 

 and these laws produce the same results ; in both 

 cases motion is perpetually destroyed, except it 

 be repaired by some living power ; in both cases 

 the relative rest of the parts of a material system 

 is the conclusion to which its motion tends. 



4. It may perhaps appear to some, that this 

 acknowledgment of the tendency of the system 

 to derangement through the action of a resisting 



