462 Recent Progress of Electricity . [August, 
and the purposes for which he was created. Though the chief 
factor in all the attractive forces, from gravitation itself down 
to the minutest molecular or chemical attraction, he is him- 
self in a great measure superior to and unaffected by any 
such compulsion. The daily rotation of the earth — at the 
rate of 17 miles per minute at the equator — will not carry 
him along with it. Being, like other spirits, destitute, or 
all but destitute, of gravity, he is not involved in or carried 
away by the motions of the earth, except in so far as he is 
functionally attached to it, and to that amount he must 
necessarily accompany it. But yet he has movements 
through the world of many kinds, in accordance with laws, 
some of which are known and others are still undiscovered. 
This powerful and ubiquitous Geni has close relations 
with all animate and inanimate things in the world. Be- 
tween him and some of them there is a much greater attach- 
ment than with others, as, for instance, in the case of the 
metal iron, that greatest friend and servant of man of all 
the metallic race. 
The farther our researches and observations have yet been 
carried (in this direction), the more they tend to confirm the 
belief, inspired also by the study of other branches of 
natural science, that the Almighty wisdom and power operate 
by means at once the most uniform and simple in their 
individual and ‘atomic manifestations, and unspeakably 
efficient, grand, and beautiful in their combined and pre- 
destinated outcome. The universe consists of an infinite 
number of globes or spheres in constant, regular, and multi- 
plex motion, and having certain sympathetic influences and 
relations with each other through means of a property called 
gravitation. 
The ultimate or minutest conceivable division of matter, 
as well as the careful study of its properties, lead to the 
same conclusion as to its constitution, namely, that its atoms 
or ultimate components are also spheres, either in motion or 
capable of being put in motion, and having opposite poles, 
and attractive powers for other atoms, whether of the same 
or of different species. But, instead of being called gravita- 
tion, the attractive force of these atoms is known as chemical 
aCtion, though it is believed by savants to be the effeCt of 
some special properties conferred upon them by Electron. 
And it is — beyond all his other qualities — by his power of 
imparting and governing these molecular attractive forces, 
that such all-important results are produced throughout the 
world as prove the Geni, Electron, to be the most powerful 
and omnipresent of God’s ministers on earth. When the 
