THE SALTS OF THE SEA. 
153 
partment of God's handiwork, upon the threshold of which man. 
has as yet been permitted to stand, to observe, and to compre- 
hend. 
293. Nay, having reached this threshold, and taken a survey of 
the surrounding ocean, we are ready to assert, with all the confi- 
dence of knowledge, that the sea has a system of circulation for 
its waters. We rest this assertion upon our faith in the physical 
adaptations with which the sea is invested. Take, for example, the 
coral islands, reefs, beds, and atolls with which the Pacific Ocean 
is studded and garnished. They were built up of materials which 
a certain kind of insect quarried from the sea water. The cur- 
rents of the sea ministered to this little insect — they were its liod 
carriers ; when fresh supplies of solid matter were wanted for the 
coral rock upon which the foundations of the Polynesian Islands 
were laid, they brought them ; the obedient currents stood ready 
with fresh supplies in unfailing streams of sea water from which 
the solid ingredients had not been secreted. Now, unless the cur- 
rents of the sea had been employed to carry olF from this insect 
the waters that had been emptied by it of their lime, and to bring 
to it others charged w^ith more, it is evident the little creature 
would have perished for want of food long before its task was half 
completed. But for currents, it would have been impaled in a 
nook of the very drop of water in which it w^as spawned ; for it 
would have soon secreted the lime contained in this drop of wa- 
ter, and then, without the ministering aid of currents to bring it 
more, it would have perished for the want of food for itself and 
materials for its edifice ; and thus, but for the benign currents 
which took this exhausted water away, there we perceive this 
emptied drop would have remained, not only as the grave of the 
little architect, but as a monument in attestation of the shocking 
monstrosity that there had been a failure in the sublime system of 
terrestrial adaptations — ^that the sea had not been adapted by its 
Creator to the well-being of all its inhabitants. Now we do know 
that its adaptations are suited to all the wants of every one of its 
inhabitants — to the wants of the coral insect as well as to those 
of the whale. Hence we say we know that the sea has its system 
of circulation, for it transports materials for the coral rock from 
one part of the world to another ; its currents receive them from 
the rivers, and hand them over to the little mason for the struct- 
