suspended—­will probably long remain unknown to mortals.  But that such are the facts, incontestibly true, none will deny, for the evidence is before us.  Now fix your attention on that needle.  There is an active and acting principle in that as well as in the magnetized blade; for the blade will not attract a splinter of wood, of whalebone, or piece of glass, tho equal in size and weight.  It will have no operation on them.  Then it is by a sort of mutual affinity, a reciprocity of attachment, between the blade and needle, that this phenomena is produced.

To apply this illustration you have only to reverse the case—­turn the knife and needle over—­and see all things attracted to the earth by the law of gravitation, a principle abiding in all matter.  All that renders the exhibition of the magnet curious or wonderful is that it is an uncommon condition of things, an apparent counteraction of the regular laws of nature.  But we should know that the same sublime principle is constantly operating thro out universal nature.  Let that be suspended, cease its active operations for a moment, and our own earth will be decomposed into particles; the sun, moon and stars will dissolve and mingle with the common dust; all creation will crumble into atoms, and one vast ocean of darkness and chaos will fill the immensity of space.

Are you then prepared to deny the principles for which we are contending?  I think you will not; but accede the ground, that such being the fact, true in nature, language, correctly explained, is only the medium by which the ideas of these great truths, may be conveyed from one mind to another, and must correspond therewith.  If language is the sign of ideas, and ideas are the impressions of things, it follows of necessity, that no language can be employed unless it corresponds with these natural laws, or first principles.  The untutored child cannot talk of these things, nor comprehend our meaning till clearly explained to it.  But some people act as tho they thought children must first acquire a knowledge of words, and then begin to learn what such words mean.  This is putting the “cart before the horse.”

Much, in this world, is to be taken for granted.  We can not enter into the minutiae of all we would express, or have understood.  We go upon the ground that other people know something as well as we, and that they will exercise that knowledge while listening to our relation of some new and important facts.  Hence it is said that “brevity is the soul of wit.”  But suppose you should talk of surds, simple and quadratic equations, diophantine problems, and logarithms, to a person who knows nothing of proportion or relation, addition or subtraction.  What would they know about your words?  You might as well give them a description in Arabic or Esquimaux.  They must first learn the simple rules on which the whole science of mathematics depends, before they can comprehend a dissertation on the more abstruse