"With respect to the subject before us, let us first notice that heat is a necessity to the world and to man, and that God has made ample provision for that need. What the condition of the world would be without heat we can only conjecture. In the polar regions a natural temperature of seventy degrees below zero has been observed. At this temperature all the water upon the globe would turn to ice hard as adamant; all vegetation would cease, and with the disappearance of vegetable life all animal life must perish. The whole earth would be a frozen, lifeless, silent waste in the midst of silent space. Some lines in Byron's picture of universal darkness would fitly describe the state of the world: 'The waves are dead, the tides are in their grave, The winds are withered in the stagnant air, And the clouds are perished.' This description would be no figure, for motion as well as life depends upon heat. Yet seventy degrees below zero is but the beginning of cold. 'By mixing liquid protoxide of nitrogen with bisulphate of carbon in a vacuum, M. Natterer produced a temperature of two hundred and twenty degrees below zero.' At this temperature some of the so-called permanent gases--as carbonic acid, chlorine, and ammonia--can be compressed into liquids, and it is believed that in the complete absence of all heat all the gases would become solids. But by the agency of heat the world teems with active life. Vegetation clothes the earth with a garment of beauty; and earth, air, and sea swarm with living creatures full of enjoyment. This great need of the world is bountifully supplied. The power and wisdom of God are employed in producing happiness. "This, however, is but a part of the benefit which heat confers upon the world. The chief inhabitant of the earth is man, and man was created for something higher than bare existence. He was created for civilization and culture. The savage state is not, as some self-styled philosophers dream, the natural state of man. Nothing is so much against Nature. The natural state is that condition in which he attains the fullest development. Let a brute be placed in so unfavorable conditions that his growth is dwarfed and his natural instincts are not called into exercise, and no one would look upon that as a natural state. But man, wild, uncultured, undeveloped, is spoken of as being in his natural state. There could be no greater mistake. Culture and civilization are according to Nature, but culture and civilization require that man should get the mastery of Nature and subdue her forces. Till man gets the victory over the forces of this rough world, he spends a precarious existence in a hard struggle to gain a meagre support for his animal life. But when once science brings art, and the mastery of Nature is gained, man can rise into culture and beauty. Opportunity is given for development. He blossoms into greatness and strength. Ideal and spiritual ends take the place of mere subsistence.