ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
87 
office for which it was prepared ; and in the same way, in God’s 
good time, the days of suns and systems, and the whole material 
universe, may be numbered : but there is One who will remain 
unchanged ; and the spirits which he has made are all safe in his 
keeping, amid the final ruin of nature.” 
These changes, however mysterious they may appear, are only a 
part of the universal law which was established when the earth was 
called into existence, clothed with plants, furnished with animals, 
appointed to run the course of its days, its seasons, and its years, 
in all the variety of their changes of time and place, and given to 
man as a heritage for knowledge and for enjoyment; “ when the 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for 
joy,” over the accomplished work of a new world and a new race. 
But let us confine ourselves more closely to the subject. 
During life there is a constant and continual change going on in 
our bodies, — from the moment that our being commences to its final 
termination. Foreign matters are taken in from without, and by the 
action of what are called assimilating functions, become part of our 
composition ; while, on the other hand, the materials of which our 
frame had been built up, being now old and unfit any longer for 
the necessary duties, are conveyed by the absorbents from the place 
which the new matter comes to occupy, and finally expelled from 
the system by the outlets provided for this purpose. 
Life, then, consists of a combined series of actions and reactions, 
ever varying, and yet constantly tending to definite ends. From 
the first moment of existence until death the body is continually 
undergoing decay and renovation ; so that at no two periods of life 
does it consist of exactly the same constituent particles. 
So great is the difference in form and feature alone, that even 
the mother who has not seen the interesting change would be unable 
to recognise the active and lively youth approaching to manhood in 
the being which she tended in his childhood, when fair and bloom- 
ing as a flower, and playful as a summer breeze. 
Perpetual mutation appears to constitute the fundamental law of 
living nature ; and it has been further decreed, that the very exist- 
ence of this change — this constant addition of new particles — this 
constant internal motion in our textures, leads to the ultimate de- 
struction of that life of which it is a present result. If we con- 
template the human being in his infancy, youth, manhood, and old 
age ; we shall find, at each of these periods, he is another and yet 
the same person. 
Even to extreme old age the change goes on : — It proceeds 
until the density of the textures has almost reached its utmost. 
The vessels no longer yield to the fluid which distends them; its 
