But neither astronomy nor geology will permit our speculations thus to terminate. A principle of causation is involved in both, and to trace this through a chain of sequences and effects, whether in the great or little, in the remote or near, is the one grand aim of philosophy. If I can perceive no bounds to the vast expanse in which natural causes operate, and can fix no border or termination of the universe; and if I am equally at a loss to discern things in their elements, and to discover the limits which terminate the subdivisions of organic matter, my inquiries will not here cease. The mind will not be satisfied so to close and to shut up the thesis propounded. I am compelled to advance onward, even as the objects recede from the view, or expand in magnitude beyond the grasp of comprehension. The soul is filled with the idea of immensity, as it familiarizes itself to the thought of the highest mountains of the earth being but specks on its surface—the terraqueous globe as an atom compared with the sun—the sun itself dwindling to a star from some point in the distant fields of space—and even all the systems that sparkle in the clearest sky only as faint streaks of light, or not discernible even for millions of years after their creation, in the systems that replenish and shine in the still remoter void. Speculations, lofty as these, do leave something behind—something nobler than arithmetical calculation—and knowledge becomes SPIRITUALIZED by them. The same result follows, when we descend in the scale of nature toward the other limit, when we perceive a like gradation from minute bodies to others incomprehensibly more minute, and are led as far below sensible measures of perception, as we were before carried beyond them, until vision is lost in utter vacuity and obliteration of all organic form. But the more attenuated and fragile the structure, the more the manifestation of Omnipotence and superintending care. If from microscopical observation we discover animals, thousands of which scarce form an atom perceptible to unassisted sense—each of which are endowed with a system of vessels, and fluids circulating in those vessels—if we can trace the propagation, nourishment, and growth of these animals—observe their motions, capacities of action, limits and conditions of existence—all this through countless millions and multiplications of tribes and generations—and, finally, after their term of being ended, now find them entombed in rocks, and elaborated into useful minerals;—knowledge thus pursued becomes again the handmaid of RELIGION, and terminates in the conviction, that we live in a universe over which the eye of Omniscience and love has been ever wakeful and predominant. The telescope leads to one verge of infinity, the microscope brings us to another; and in the discoveries of both there is the firmest assurance, that as nothing is too distant and vast for the Creator’s control, so nothing is too minute for His wise and fatherly care.