Ter] AND SYMBOLS. 347 



prevents temptation from affecting him, and he reflects light all 

 around him. GA. 



The System of Terrestrial Adaptations. 



That the sea has a system of circulation for its waters we 

 are ready, with all the confidence of knowledge, to assert. We 

 rest this assertion upon our faith in the physical adaptations 

 with which the sea is invested. Take, for example, the coral 

 islands, reefs, beds, and atolls with which the Pacific Ocean is 

 studded and garnished. They were built up of materials which 

 a certain kind of insect quarried from the sea-water. The 

 currents of the sea ministered to this little insect they were 

 its hod-carriers ; when fresh supplies of solid matter were 

 wanted for the coral rock upon which the foundations of the 

 Polynesian Islands were laid, they brought them ; the obedient 

 currents stood ready with fresh supplies in unfailing streams of 

 sea- water, from which the solid ingredients had not been secreted. 

 Now unless the currents of the sea had been employed to carry 

 off from this insect the waters that had been emptied by it of 

 their lime, and to bring it to others charged with more, it is 

 evident the little creature would have perished for want of food 

 long before its task was half completed. But for currents, it 

 would have been impaled in a nook of the very drop of water 

 in which it was spawned ; for it would have soon secreted the 

 lime contained in this drop of water, and then, without the 

 ministering aid of currents to bring it more, it would have 

 perished for the want of food for itself and materials for its 

 edifice ; and thus but for the benign currents which took this 

 exhausted water away, there, we perceive, this emptied drop 

 would have remained, not only as the grave of the little archi- 

 tect, but as a monument in attestation of the shocking monstro- 

 sity that there had been a failure in the sublime system of 

 terrestrial adaptations that the sea had not been adapted by 

 its Creator to the well-being of all its inhabitants. Now -\ve do 

 know that its adaptations are suited to all the wants of every 

 one of its inhabitants to the wants of the coral insect as well 

 as to those of the whale. Hence we say we know that the sea 

 has its system of circulation, for it transports materials for tho 



