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classes of facts requires similar operation for their continuance 
to that required for their original production. We cannot 
conceive of force but as a personal act; our idea of it is 
derived solely from the effort necessary on our part to produce. 
motion; and, as we find that motion does not belong to 
matter, either in the atom or the mass, but is superimposed, 
so continued action is necessary from the original source 
for its continuance. We are unable to think of continued 
motion without continued energy. And, when we attempt 
to calculate the sum of the motion which is going on 
every moment in the universe, we find ourselves as utterly 
unable to approach a true result as we are to attain to an 
adequate idea of the mode of creation out of nothing. Yet 
there the motion is as a necessity of universal existence, and 
there, at its back, is the energy or force which is its cause: 
too vast and too wonderful for our comprehension. 
But there is one side of this question of which we must 
not lose sight. We are evidently not in an orphaned, a 
forsaken world; but we have present with us everywhere 
the hand that formed, now sustaining all things. 
This incessant operation is necessary for the continued 
renewal of the earth as the habitation of man. Without day 
and night, summer and winter, the disintegrating atmosphere, 
and rain and frost, the fertility of the earth could not be 
preserved, and its utility to man would cease; and we find 
ourselves unable to increase its utility but by taking advan- 
tage. of the order first established, and by working on the 
same lines, after the manner of the miller who diverts the 
stream to his own wheel. He cannot create the stream, he 
can originate no force, but only employ what the great 
Operator has already provided. In like manner, all recupera- 
tive operation is not of human origin, but is simply the 
application of recuperative power lying ready to hand by the 
prolific providence of the Author of all. 
Life requires certain conditions. The most elementary 
vegetable cannot exist without light and water. The animal 
must have organised substances for his food, and a properly- 
mingled atmosphere to breathe. Small changes in either are 
fatal. The world is full of life, full beyond possibility of 
numbering, and it does not fail. If we were able to forma 
judgment, we should incline rather to the conclusion that it 
has been increasingly abundant from the beginning. But if 
we cannot enumerate the lives, or even the varieties of life, how 
much more are we unable to tell all the observation, and the 
care, and the varied and constant operation which have 
been necessary from the beginning to perpetuate it. 
