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Show f I 118 HARMONY OF NATURE. of its absolute gravitation. has ~emained tfe.sa~:; the test and evidence of Its bemg;. and a way in ing according .to circumstances, mstantly' and the most unerrmg manner. . . cor- But though the force of gravttatwn, or mor.e f rectl the phenomenon, or appearance of grav~ta 10" (for rll that we know about forces or .Po~vers I~ only appearance), be thus universal, and. I!l.Its te~ ~ncy to act invariable, it is so finely dhi:Vl~Iblet ~n a th~i~ can follow it down, from suns w IC . re .ai d' planets in their paths by Its mfluenc.e, surrou~ ;~! distance of full eighteen hundred mtl~~ e~ ~f miles (that is the mean ~istance of the I t Herschel from the sun), to mttes and motes, i~~cf~o the particles which circ~.Ilate in the vessels f animalculi whose whole bodtes have to be mag- . 0 · fi d many thousands of times, before the finest DI e n see them. and though it can lead a globe eyea rclya one hundre'd thousan d mi·1 es m· d' meter or 13 ' ~~urteen hundred ti-mes as large as o~r ~arth, ~ore easily thaP we can lead. a lamb; yet It IS so phant -harmonizes so well WI~h all. the other .pow.ers of nature, that ins.tead of hmdermg any thmg, 1t pro-motes every thmg. . The unity of purpose with which ~ven thmgs which to our observation, when we thmk of th~m · ly would appear to be of the most opposite ~~!ra~ter,' work in nature,. is one o! the .most d~Jj htful rewards of observmg them 1n their combln~ tions. The sun, the moon, and the planet& all work together in producing days and year~ ; so that all the living creatures, vegetable and ~~tmal, may have their due times and seasons of act1~1ty and re-ose The night restores from the fatigue of the past day, and tunes all the po~ers of natu!e for the Xay which is to come. The wmte! howls m.storms, and the spring is inconstant w1th suns~me and showers, only \.hat the summer may bloom 1n spleu· ... ~ ~ . THERE IS A FIRST CAUSE. 119 dour, and the autumn ripen the seeds of young life for the coming year. Of all those appearances which, blending together, produce so much beauty, and beauty so constantly varying, and yet so constant in its succession that it flows on in one unbroken stream, and which, as ~e observe it, receives, in our knowledge of it, an mcrease every moment, just as a river gains a rill from every dell that it passes, we cannot say that any one is the cause of any other. When we push our observation of them, and our reflection on them, as far as human knowledge can go, we find that they all equally demand causes ; and that nothing but A. UNIVERSAL CAUSE could have produced them, or c<;~.n . satisfy our minds when we come to the bourn where observation stops. And whithersoever we direct our contemplation, upwards or downwards, forwards or backwards, in the extension of space, or in the succession of time, we really can find no boundary -no greatest, no smallest, no first, no last; and yet, as appearance follows appearance in time, we find that the whole are in succession, and that nothing that now is could have been, if something had not been before it ; and yet,-though any one of those successions of appearances (which we call the la\.YS of nature) can be suspended by the action or resistance of some, almost any of the others, no one of them can be destroyed or changed into an0ther-how much soever its effects may be modified,- we cannot even imagine that any of them could have been the first cause of any other, or could have existed without something preceding. It is much the same with the productions of nature as with the laws; and it cannot be very different, as the productions are just the results or consequences of. the laws. We see that the habits of plants and ammals, and the properties of compound matter, can be changed; and when we once ohserve how the change takes place, we generally are able, within |