Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings around us. Take the class of insects alone: of these, not fewer than 100,000 distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water, and examine it with a microscope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures. Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within the body of a larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality. In the very ocean deeps, insects, by the labor of ages, are enabled to construct islands, and lay the foundations of future continents. The coral insect is the great architect of the southern ocean. First a reef is formed; seeds are wafted to it, vegetation springs up, a verdant island exists; then man takes possession, and a colony is formed. Dig down into the earth, and from a hundred yards deep, throw up a portion of soil—cover it so that no communication can take place between that earth and the surrounding air. Soon you will observe vegetation springing up—perhaps new plants, altogether unlike any thing heretofore grown in that neighborhood. During how many thousands of years has the vitality of these seeds been preserved deep in the earth’s bosom! Not less wonderful is the fact stated by Lord Lindsay, who took from the hand of an Egyptian mummy a tuber, which must have been wrapped up there more than 2000 years before. It was planted, was rained and dewed upon, the sun shone on it again, and the root grew, bursting forth and blooming into a beauteous Dahlia! At the North Pole, where you would expect life to become extinct, the snow is sometimes found of a bright red color. Examine it by the microscope, and, lo! it is covered with mushrooms, growing on the surface of the snow as their natural abode. A philosopher distills a portion of pure water, secludes it from the air, and then places it under the influence of a powerful electric current. Living beings are stimulated into existence, the _acari Crossii_ appear in numbers! Here we touch on the borders of a great mystery; but it is not at all more mysterious than the fact of Life itself. Philosophers know nothing about it, further than it _is_. The attempt to discover its cause, inevitably throws them back upon the Great First Cause. Philosophy takes refuge in religion.