The grand source of all warmth on the earth is that brilliant light which God has placed in the sky to rule over the day. In a summer’s day you sit down in the bright sunshine, and bask in its warmth. In winter time, when the sky is covered with clouds, and ice and snow lie thick over the ground, you place yourself indoors near the glowing fire; but strange to say, it is still the sun’s genial warmth that you experience. If the fire be of coal, it is warmth which was borrowed from the sun centuries ago. Reflect for an instant upon this marvellous arrangement entered upon, for your comfort, ages before you were yourself called into being! When those coal-making forests spread their broad masses of foliage out in the sunshine, there were no human creatures existing upon the earth; and, indeed, not even the flocks and herds, which are so essential to man’s welfare, had been framed. Neither cattle nor sheep could have found pasture on the plains which yielded them support. The great duty of those forests must have been to store up genial warmth for then uncreated generations of beings, who in due season were to appear, and to avail themselves of the provision thus made. But suppose that you had neither fresh nor stored-up sunshine to fall back upon, and had to depend entirely for your warmth upon that furnace which is carried about in your living laboratory, and kept alight by the puffing of your breath. Still that internal heat comes originally out of the sunshine. Just before the time when man was placed upon the earth, the beautiful family of plants was created, which fills the gardens with roses, and which yields the apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum, the apricot, the peach, the almond, the strawberry, and the raspberry. Just at the very time was planted on the globe, the vegetable tribe which furnishes the different kinds of nourishing grain, and which provides pasture for grazing animals. The fruits, the grasses, and the grain were all commissioned to extract power and warmth from the sunshine, and to store it up in such a form that the influences could conveniently be introduced into the interior of the living body. Living animals which are warmed by the fuel contained in their food, procure their heat from sunshine that was stored up, as it were, but yesterday. When animals live upon flesh, and get their strength out of the lean fibre, and their warmth out of the fat of this food, still it must be remembered that the flesh has been fed on the grass of the field just before. The main office of the plant in creation is thus to store up in a fixed and convenient form supplies of active energies which can be turned to account by animated frames. The plant effects this end by preparing the food upon which animals live;—that food which, besides keeping the body in repair, serves also to furnish it with warmth, and to give it strength and power. How admirable and beneficent is this plan, whereby the genial influence of