°; 
362 [March 1,.. 
Price.] 
scent receives the juice of the pancreas, and the bile from the gall-bladder 
of the liver. The action of the stomach keeps its contents in motion ; 
and one portion, unfitted to enter the life-process, is rejected into the 
draught ; the other called chyle, is a milky fluid, which the Jacteals open- 
ing into the intestines imbibe and ‘carry to the thoracic duct and into the 
venous system. The heart propels the crimson blood that is returned to 
it by the veins, together with the contributions of chyle, upon the lungs, 
where it meets the oxygen of the air, is decarbonized, and becomes scar- 
let ; and this bright red blood, being returned to the heart, is propelled 
through the arteries to the extremities of the body, freighted with all the 
material the system demands; the corpuscles for bone, muscle, tendon, 
tissue, etc., and delivers them as and where wanted, and from the ex- 
tremities the blood is returned through the veins to the heart. The pro- 
cess of life is carried on by ceaseless pulsations. The heart throbs; the 
arteries expand and contract; the stomach, the diaphragm and chest 
expand and contract; the lungs are kept in play, and we breathe ; the 
intestines are operated by the peristaltic motion, and the glands and 
absorbents are ever at work. All this we perceive, or the anatomist or 
physiologist does for us, and to him all is as familiar as things of daily 
observation. But can he tell us what life is, or how it acts with an intel- 
ligence surpassingly wonderful? We see in this process that the food 
has become part of the living being ; and it will remain such so long as it 
is useful to the creature, and when any part becomes useless in the animal 
economy it is rejected, so that after a few years the whole system is com- 
posed of new materials, but the same life of identical consciousness has 
ges of the life-mo- 
survived, and may survive more than ten entire cha 
lecules. It is the life in the body, and only the life that has had power to 
take in, digest, and assimilate the organic food we eat, and make it part 
of itself. Why or how the thing we call life can do all this, no micro- 
scope reveals to our sight ; no skill of dissection can reach it ; no cunning 
of thought can teach us. We only witness the process and the fact of 
life. The Power that created the life, and endowed it with its wonderful 
intelligence, has chosen to keep this secret to Himself; and though it is 
ourself, and we are always conscious of its presence and action while we 
live, we can never tell what it is, or how it lives. We must accept it as 
an ultimate fact ; but from that fact we may, if we are logical, infer that 
it had an Author, who could create it, and yet permit us never to know 
His secret, though that secret be our own life. The unknowable is thus 
dwelt upon not only to heighten our conception of Deity, but to show 
where time and labor would be spent in vain ; and also, because it is salu- 
tary that all who investigate science should do so with the humbling 
consciousness that all that is known bears a very small proportion to that 
which here cannot be known. Yet, from the known, from the evidence 
of its design, and power, and beneficence ; its obedience to law, and har- 
monious movements ; its grandeur and glory, we surely infer a Creator,. 
Almighty and Omniscient. 
