Take a great mass of marble.  It was not always a mountain.  It floated invisibly in the sea.  Invisible animals took it up, particle by particle, to build a testudo, a traveling house, for themselves.  The ephemeral life departing, there was a rain of dead shells to make limestone masses at the bottom of the sea.  It will not always remain rock.  Air and water disintegrate it once more.  Little rootlets seize upon it and it goes coursing in the veins of plants.  It becomes fiber to the tree, color to the rose, and fragrance to the violet.  But, whether floating invisibly in the water, shell of infusoria in the seas, marble asleep in the Pentelican hills, constituting the sparkle and fizz of soda water, claiming the world’s admiration as the Venus de Milo, or giving beauty and meaning to the most fitting symbol that goes between lovers, it is still the same matter.  It may be diffused as gas or concentrated as a world, but it is still the same matter.

Matter is worthy of God’s creation.  Astronomy is awe-full; microscopy is no less so.  Astronomy means immensity, bulk; atoms mean individuality.  The essence of matter seems to be spirit, personality.  It seems to be able to count, or at least to be cognizant of certain exact quantities.  An atom of bromine will combine with one of hydrogen; one of oxygen with two of hydrogen; one of nitrogen with three of hydrogen; one of silicon with four of hydrogen, etc.  They marry without thought of divorce.  A group of atoms married by affinity is called a molecule.  Two atoms of hydrogen joined to one of oxygen make water.  They are like three marbles laid near together on the ground, not close together; for we well know that water does not fill all the space it occupies.  We can put eight or ten similar bulks of other substances into a glass of water without greatly increasing its bulk, some actually diminishing it.  Water molecules are like a mass of shot, with large interstices between.  Drive the atoms of water apart by heat till the water becomes steam, till they are as three marbles a larger distance apart, yet the molecule is not destroyed, the union is still indissoluble.  One physicist has declared that the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen are probably not nearer to each other in water than one hundred and fifty men would be if scattered over the surface of England—­one man for each four hundred square miles.[2] What must the distance be in steam? what the greater distance in the more extreme rarefactions?  It is asserted that millions of cubic miles of some comets tails would not make a cubic inch of matter solid as iron.  Now, when earth and oceans are “changed” to this sort of tenuity creations will be more easy.  We shall not be obliged to hew out our material with broadaxes, nor blast it out with dynamite.  Let us not fear that these creations will not be permanent; they will be enough so for our purpose.  We can then afford to waste more worlds in a day than dull stupidity can count in a lifetime.