24 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



mind all proclaiming the power and omnipresence of Deity, who 

 carries this globe and its furniture eighty-six thousand miles per 

 hour. 



On reviewing the mechanism of the heart, for instance, every 

 reflective mind must be struck with the admirable adaptation and 

 suitableness of its several parts, and also the harmony of its opera- 

 tions. How important is the least part of its complex machinery ! 

 If but a thread connected with the valves be broken, or one of its 

 slightest members burst ; if a single valve omitted to fall down 

 before the retrograde current of blood, or become inverted, the 

 vital functions could no longer be carried on ; the vast machine of 

 the whole animal frame would be immediately deratfged, and death 

 necessarily ensue. Who would suppose that an apparatus so com- 

 plex, so easily disarranged, and which is thrown into action con- 

 siderably more than 100,000 times a day, should continue un- 

 impaired, by day and night, sleep or awake, for eighty or one 

 hundred years, constituting, as it were, a perpetual motion ! 



There is a variety and elegance in the texture of the human 

 frame, in the formation and arrangement of the bones and muscles, 

 the arteries and veins, far beyond any comparison, all acting 

 together in such a mysterious way as to render us a wonder to 

 ourselves. 



God of perfection ! how benevolently hast thou displayed thyself 

 in man ! Behold the human body 1 that fair investiture of all that 

 is most beauteous. Unity in variety ! variety in unity ! What 

 elegance, what propriety, what symmetry through all the forms, all 

 the members ! How imperceptible, how infinite are the gradations 

 that constitute this beauteous whole ! 



How sublimely does Shakspeare express himself " What a 

 piece of work is man! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty! 

 in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how 

 like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the 

 world, the paragon of animals !" 



Says Feltham However elevated and curious the study of any 

 part of the visible creation may be, and though every branch of 

 natural philosophy alike displays the benevolence and perfection 

 of the Deity, yet of all the parts of science, our present researches 

 are justly entitled to a pre-eminence. 



Consider the parts and structure of the body! Is not the body 

 of man the noblest piece of animal mechanism possible in nature ? 

 does it not really transcend the power and thought of man to 



