LAWS OF GOD IN NATURE. 
19 
pass to a notice of the laws governing those vibrations of which we 
become conscious through the ear—the laws of sound. Laws 
govern the origin of sound, its propagation, its intensity and 
velocity, its reflection—producing echoes—and even its refraction— 
for the tick of a watch is better heard at the focus of a gaseous lens 
than at any adjacent place. Laws too regulate the quality of 
sound, including pitch, power, and timbre; and regulate chords and 
discords. One set of laws governs the sounds produced in horns 
and other tubes open at both ends ; another set is at work in the 
pandsean pipe and other tubes open only at one end; while by 
still another set do we get sound from gongs and other plates, the 
triangle and other rods, and the drum and other membranes. 
Some of the most interesting and, to man, important of the laws 
of God in nature govern the production, action, and effect of the 
food we eat, the fluids we drink, the physic we swallow, and the 
many materials we similarly change, in furnaces and factories, from 
one kind of substance to another. The great variety of substances 
which pass into the systems of man and other animals by the 
mouth and throat are composed of very few primary or elementary 
forms of matter. Indeed, probably ninety-nine hundredths of what 
man swallows, whether as food, drink, or drugs, are composed of 
four elements only; but these four are endowed with such mar¬ 
vellous powers of combination, and are governed in those combina¬ 
tions by such wonderful laws, that they suffice for almost the 
whole of man’s alimentary needs and the similar needs of the lower 
animals. The vegetable kingdom too is chiefly built up of the 
same four elements. They are, in short, the four characteristic 
organic elements, that is, elements forming the various organs of 
plants and animals. In childhood and in youth, and in the cor¬ 
responding periods of the lives of the lower animals, enough of 
mineral elements must be absorbed from food to produce a frame¬ 
work or skeleton; and throughout the whole of life our animal 
and vegetable food must contain enough mineral matter—supple¬ 
mented by a daily portion of the actual mineral termed salt—to 
produce certain physical effects within us; occasionally, too, some 
of us have to swallow relatively minute quantities of mineral 
medicines: but mainly, so far as quantity is concerned, we have 
to rely for sustenance and for medication on the multitudes of 
the compounds of four elements—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and 
oxygen. Now the first great law or decree respecting these four 
and indeed all other elements is that already alluded to, namely, 
the wonderful power or character of combination, including inten¬ 
sity and precision of combination. Example.—Eeference has 
