714 'Reviews. [Oct., 



just those which of necessity must be most numerous and powerful in 

 such a mixed radiation as the sun's. Had the case been otherwise — ha,d 

 we depended exclusively upon the visible solar rays for climate — had these 

 been heating and those luminous — our earth would have been in sorry 

 plight ; they have not intensity of power equal to such needs. Yet can 

 Science tell us why such minute differences in the length of waves of 

 motion should confer such different powers ? She can but say they do. 

 And as their doing so is manifestly necessary to the maintenance of 

 Nature's order, the fulfilment of her ends — plainly, too, adjusted to the 

 properties and forms of matter they affect — Religion claims them for her 

 own, and says God made them so. 



" Standing at this height, then, and regarding every part of this vast 

 system of causes and conditions as coming straight from God, how mar- 

 vellous a picture of His mind and attributes does it present. Before yet 

 any force or matter existed, He was planning out their nature and relation- 

 ships, determining the absolute quantity and form of each, bestowing pro- 

 perties and powers, ordaining laws, parting each several kind to its 

 predestined place and office, allotting to each its own peculiar work, yet 

 causing all to aid and help the others ; disposing with like ease and skill 

 the mightiest and minutest agents, the causes and conditions of each varied 

 action ; adjusting link to link in complex order, each influencing and 

 modifying the rest, yet all together subserving one great purpose, and so 

 subserving it as if it were their purpose too, as if they too desired their 

 Creator's ends ; watching and guiding all from age to age, developing and 

 perfecting the scheme by gradual elaboration, until at last it reached its 

 present form and symmetry, its beauty of proportion, its meetness for its 

 end. Such wondrous harmony in Nature's working, such seeming will 

 and purpose, might almost make one think there was a life, a mind, in 

 things inanimate. Yet no ; these are but the robes, the outward dress of 

 Deity, bearing the impress of their Maker truly, but of themselves incapa- 

 ble of aught ; they are but instruments to work His will — perfect instru- 

 ments, because made and adapted for that very end, and wielded by the 

 All- wise hand that made them — yet still but instruments. Man compares 

 his instruments and machines with this, and how immeasurably inferior 

 now do they appear ; how crude, how clumsy. How vast — how infinitely 

 vast — the distance that separates the Creator's mind and wisdom from the 

 man's ! " 



Besides its higher merit, Mr. Warington's little work possesses that 

 of being educational, for it comprises a 'popular resume of all that is 

 generally known in regard to the operation of the physical forces in 

 nature ; and it is a book which we would especially recommend to 

 teachers of youth, inasmuch as it is calculated to impress the latter 

 with the value of such knowledge more effectively than a mere hand- 

 book of physics. 



There are some expressions in it which we have either not clearly 

 understood, or they are at variance with the general views enunciated by 

 the author. Are we to understand that the " sun's surface particles " 

 are themselves " shot hither through thirty million leagues of fine in- 

 tangible aether," or merely that their " delicate tremor " * in the sun's 

 surface is communicated to our atmosphere through the wavelike 

 agitation of the " fine and intangible aether diffused throughout all 

 space and throughout all matter ? "f 



* P. 102. • f P. 24. 



