DURATION OF MATTER. 255 



earth will have its dissolution as well as every indi- 

 vidualeven the shortest-lived of its productions. 

 That " the elements shall melt with fervent heat ;" 

 that " the heavens and the earth shall flee away, and 

 there shall be no place found for them/' are not poet- 

 ical exaggerations, but perfectly in accordance with 

 the most sound and the calmest philosophy. The 

 whole earth the whole solar system, may, by the 

 application of a sufficient quantity of heat become 

 thin, colourless air air in which not solids or the 

 atmosphere, but hydrogen gas, and substances ten 

 thousand fold more rare than that, would sink like 

 lead. We are of course not acquainted with any 

 case of the action of heat so great as this; but 

 whether heat be a substance, or a mere motion, we 

 have no means of ascertaining what may be the stores 

 of it, and therefore we are not warranted to say that 

 as much does not exist as would dissipate the heavens 

 and the earth the atmosphere and the globe, till the 

 nearest atoms should be a thousand miles asunder. 

 But the mind is safe from any such contingency. It 

 contains nothing upon which a physical agency can 

 act, nothing that can be separated or altered in its ar- 

 rangement by any created force, even though far greater 

 than that which, to the perception of man, would an- 

 nihilate the globe ; and therefore we cannot even 

 imagine its destruction, unless by an effort of the same 

 Being that called it into existence. 



