304 Dr. Mantell’s Lecture on Zoophytes. 
last are supported by living atoms still less, and so on, and on, ill 
the mind is lost im wonder, and can pursue the subject no farther. 
Next we see the results produced by these myriads of animated 
forms; the excess of calcareous matter brought into the waters of 
the ocean consolidated by the influence of these minute beings, and 
forming new islands and continents. Lastly, we find in the ancient 
natural records of our globe, evidence that the Almighty Creator 
acted by the same agents in past ages. The beds of fossil coral 
are now the sites of towns and cities, occupied by a people in the 
highest state of civilization who construct their abodes of the lime- 
stone, and ornament their palaces with the marble formed of the 
consolidated skeletons of the zocphytes which lived and died in an 
ocean that has long since passed away. Hence we perceive that - 
He who formed the universe creates nothing in vain; his works all 
harmonize to blessings unbounded by the mightiest or most minute 
of his creatures; and the more our knowledge is increased, and our: 
powers of observation enlarged, the more exalted are our conceptions 
of the wonders of creation. ‘Thus, to use the eloquent language of 
an eminent divine, while the telescope enables us to see a system 
in every star, the microscope unfolds to us a world in every atom. 
The one teaches us that this mighty globe, with the whole burden 
of its people and its countries, is but a grain of sand in the field of 
immensity—the other, that every atom may harbor the tribes and 
families of a busy population. ‘The one shews us the insignificance — 
of the world we inhabit, the other redeems it from all its insignifi- 
cance, for it tells us that in the leaves of every forest, in the flowers 
of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet there are worlds 
teeming with life, and numerous as are the stars of the firmament ; 
the one suggests to us, that beyond and above all that is visible to 
man, there may be regions of creation which sweep innumerably 
along, and carry the impress of the Almighty’s hand to the remotest 
scenes of the universe; the other, that within and beneath all that 
minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, 
there may be a world of invisible beings, and that could we draw 
aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we 
might behold a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy can unfold; 
a universe within the compass of a point so small as to elude all the 
powers of the microscope, but where the Almighty ruler of all things 
finds room for the exercise of his attributes, where he can raise ano- 
ther mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the 
evidence of his glory. , 
