ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
23 
accumulation of the first misty drop, more fine than the lightest 
‘rack’ which floats in the upper air, but which in due time will 
congregate and ripen, and condense into the mighty flood of the 
wide-rolling ocean ; — it may be the first movement of the young 
growth in a plant, the primal impulse of that oak which is not to 
become even an acorn till a thousand years have passed away, 
and ten successive generations of the forest have mouldered in the 
dust ; — or it may be the yet more mysterious germ of animal life 
which stands secure in the law of its Maker, though ten thousand 
generations of its race may pass away ere it comes to its final 
development, appear on the earth, inhale the breath of life in the 
air, perform its appointed functions, and then is gathered to the 
dust; — it may be any or it may be all these, or any of the count- 
less thousands of actions which take place in nature ; and yet, if you 
attempt to trace it backward to its rudimental beginning, it not 
only eludes the sense, but sets the imagination at defiance.” As it 
is written, God created all things out of nothing ; and it is a most 
striking confirmation of the sacred truth, that we can follow not 
only substantive matter, but all these actions to which the various 
forms and changes of matter are owing, down to the very bourn of 
nothingness, and there is knowledge even at the very verge — at 
that mysterious boundary where the mists of oblivion begin to 
thicken around the mind ; for here we find all matter tending to one 
simple elementary form, and all action of matter tending to one 
simple elementary effort; nor can we help being equally astonished 
and delighted by the extreme simplicity at which we thus arrive, 
and the magnificent system which has been thence produced. 
In every part of the earth, and to whatever substance our 
attention is directed, we meet with nothing that is what we 
might call primary or original : every thing we meet with is a 
production, the result of some secondary operation, which secondary 
operation is a natural cause, and therefore not only open to our 
inquiry, but urging us to inquire. It is not enough for us to fold 
our hands in idleness, and content ourselves with saying, that any 
one appearance, or thing, or place, is part of the creation of God ; 
for it would be presumptuous in us to pretend to have the slightest 
knowledge of the condition of worlds as they come immediately 
from the hands of the Almighty. All created things address 
themselves to us by a long line of descent ; and though we cannot 
see the secondary mode of production, we can trace it backwards 
as far as facts and philosophy will bear us out ; yet we cannot, and 
we dare not, even speculate about the primary step when Almighty 
Power willed the commencement of a world, or of a race of in- 
habitants. 
There was a time, no doubt, when life did not exist on our- 
