Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon--these are the life-giving elements. They are the life-producing and life-sustaining elements. Neither animal nor vegetable life can exist without them. The entire activity of nature depends upon them. Every organic substance contains them. No organic substance can exist without them. The principle of life is due to them. From a blade of grass to an insect, from an insect to an animal, including man, one cannot emerge into life without these elements. The birth, growth, and development of plant and animal depend upon them, the sustenance and nurture. All our food-substances are almost wholly made up of these elements. No force, power, or energy can be produced without their presence. Our muscular strength, our nervous force, our very thoughts, our imagination, as well as digestion, respiration, circulation of the blood, depend on these elements. Our sensations, our pleasures, our pains, depend upon them. All the excitement and depression in life are dependent on them. The beauties of vegetation, all the various shades and colors of flower and blossom, the tints and odors, are dependent on them. No phenomenon in nature, no matter how terrible, delightful, or enchanting, can be manifested without these elements. No earthquake, thunder, storm, lightning, wind, hail, rain, snow, or ice could exist without them. No light, heat, or motion--in fact, none of the physical forces, could be evolved without them. Our atmosphere, ocean, seas, rivers, forests, are composed of them. No art, science, mechanics, architecture, nor indeed anything that we now enjoy, could exist without them. Gunpowder, dynamite, electricity, and all else are dependent on these elements. Why attempt to enumerate the extraordinary roles they play on earth and in the universe? Every plant would wither, every life would perish, without Oxygen; this element may be truly called the breath of life. The creation of God is dependent on these elements, because were it not for man God would never have been. The ark, made of wood, was composed of them. The figure of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, as she is called, as well as all the saints, were and are composed of Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, etc. We know that these chemical elements enter into the composition of all things in nature--mineral, vegetable, animal. We also may be absolutely certain that no more elements exist now, at this present time, than existed ten, twenty, or one thousand million of years ago. Chemical elementary substances have no greater relative weight towards one another, nor a greater volume, at this present time than they had at any time since the existence of this earth. The total weight of all elements that enter into the formation of this terrestrial globe has never varied, whether they were in solid, fluid, or gaseous state. The law of gravitation has always existed.