396 



GENERAL FORCES. 



CHAFFER harmony of the works of the Creator. Along with 



xxvii: 



General 

 operation 

 ot known 

 laws. 



this diversity, however, it is unquestionable that many 

 other laws besides that of gravitation operate beyond the 

 limits of our own sphere ; and in pursuing our investi- 

 gations into these, not only our own neighbouring satel- 

 lite, but the solar system, and even the tixed stars and 

 remoter nebular groups, are being laid under contribu- 

 tion for evidence in proof of the same indications of har- 

 monious order and benevolent design, with which we are 

 familiar on the surface of our own planet. On this sub- 

 ject, Professor Nichol has remarked : — " I have spoken 

 concerning the probable existence of life through all 

 these spheres. Let us look for one moment, before con- 

 cluding the subject, at the real nature of the question, 

 which is of all the most interesting. It appears equiva- 

 lent to this : Are we, without passing into extravagance, 

 entitled to assume that forces, which in so far as we 

 have positively traced them, enter as essentials into the 

 Grantation. constitution of our earth, are not confined within its 

 conditions ? Think of gravity. Before science raised 

 the veil from the distant, we knew it only in the fact of 

 the fall of a stone, or in the roundness of a drop of water ; 

 now, we have followed it through the complex motions 

 of the moon, and through the order of the entire sys- 

 tem. It pursues the comets through the abysses ; it 

 governs the orbits of the double and triple stars ; it 

 guides the sun in his path through the skies, ay, and 

 even those stupendous evolutions of firmaments, during 

 "which the stars congregate into dazzling clusters, or 

 arrange themselves in gallaxies. Boundless the sphere 

 of this force ; and shall an energy yet nobler, more sub- 

 tle, probably with a root much more profound, be fan- 

 cied so weak, so feeble, so dependent on circumstance, 

 that only in our world, or some one like it, it is free to 

 work out its wonderful jiroducts ? Look at its history in 

 that very earth. In the chalk cliffs, in caverns unseen 

 by the sun, in maislies that to man are desolation and 

 death, life yet teems and rejoices — its forms growing in 



Its nniver 

 salitj- 



