8 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



A particle of water takes its departure from the 

 surface of the sea, in order to fulfil certain impor- 

 tant offices to the earth : and having executed the 

 service which was assigned to it, returns to the 

 bosom which it left. 



Some have thought that we have too much 

 water upon the globe, the sea occupying above 

 three-quarters of its whole surface. But the ex- 

 panse of ocean, immense as it is, may be no more 

 than sufficient to fertilize the earth. Or, inde- 

 pendently of this reason, I know not why the sea 

 may not have as good a right to its place as the 

 land. It may proportionably support as many 

 inhabitants; minister to as large an aggregate of 

 enjoyment. The land only affi)rds a habitable 

 surface ; the sea is habitable to a great depth. 



III. Of Fire, we have said that it dissolves. 

 The only idea probably which this term raised 

 in the reader's mind, was that of fire melting me- 

 tals, resins, and some other substances, fluxing 

 ores, running glass, and assisting us in many of our 

 operations, chemical or culinary. Now these are 

 only uses of an occasional kind, and give us a very 

 imperfect notion of what fire does for us. The 

 grand importance of this dissolving power, the 

 great office indeed of fire in the economy of nature, 

 is keeping things in a state of solution — that is to 

 say, in a state of fluidity. Were it not for the 

 presence of heat, or of a certain degree of it, all 

 fluids would be frozen. The ocean itself would 

 be a quarry of ice ; universal nature stiff' and dead. 



