162 GRAND LAW OF NATURE. 



ferentl}^ situated with respect to it. But though 

 altered it is not disturbed ; the balance is never de- 

 ranged, and we are so far from feehng the inequahties 

 of its motions, that it is only after the most profound 

 investigation that we become aware of their taking 

 place. The law which God has given it is a perfect 

 law ; and no case can arise to which it does not apply 

 with the same ease and the same certainty. If the 

 motion requires to be accelerated or retarded, in order 

 to keep up the perfect balance, the very necessity for 

 the change is, in itself, the cause of that change ; and, 

 be the aberration ever so much, there is always a 

 principle inseparably connected with it, which, in due 

 time, produces a return. 



Just so with the growing and living productions of 

 nature ; if the general circumstances are such as to 

 harmonise with an increase, there is no waiting for 

 that increase as man must wait in his workings, and 

 no toil as he must toil to bring it about. The neces- 

 sity and the supply come so simultaneously, that the 

 one cannot be called the cause and the other the 

 effect. They at once prove their origin from the 

 same cause ; and that that cause is no part of the 

 system of nature, although intimately familiar with it 

 all in extent and in duration. 



The preservation of the whole system of nature 

 requires that, at certain pauses, and those not very 

 wide of each other, the races which, among their 

 other uses, put the birds in motion, must be as " the 

 dry bones in the valley of death ;" but the Author of 

 nature has so ordered that, when their activity 

 becomes necessary, there is "a spirit" breathed upon 

 them from the system, which can, unseen, and in an 

 instant, pass over them and recal them to life and 

 activity. Thus the cold winter of the polar climes, 



