Tripoli, or rotten-stone, an article used in every family, and tons of which are daily employed in manufactories, is composed entirely of animalcul‘.  In each cubic inch there are forty-one billion, that is, forty-one million-million of these living, breathing creatures, each of whom has organs of sight, hearing and digestion.  Think, if you can, of the internal organization of beings a million of whom could rest on the point of a cambric needle!

But there are more minute forms of creation than even those.  Deposit a grain, the four hundred and eightieth part of an ounce of musk, in any place, and, for twenty years, it will throw off exhalations of fragrance, without causing any perceptible decrease of weight.  The fragrance that for so many years goes forth from that minute portion of matter is composed of particles of musk.  How small must each of those particles be, that follow each other in ceaseless succession for twenty years, without lessening, to any perceptible degree, the weight of the deposit!  And yet we have not reached the monad.  A celebrated author

Niewentyt. made a computation which led to the conclusion that six billion as many atoms of light flow from a candle in one second as there are grains of sand in the whole earth, supposing each cubic inch to contain one million!

Here we must stop.  Further advances are impossible, yet our end is not attained; we have not yet reached the monad, for the animalcul‘ and the less sentient particles of matter, light, are not, for they are divisible.

The insect can be divided, because it has limbs with which to move; and an intelligence higher than man can doubtless see emanations from those particles of light.  But a monad is indivisible!  Think of each cubic inch of this great earth containing a million grains of sand, and those countless grains multiplied by one billion, or a million-million, and that the product only shows the number of particles of light that flow from a candle in one second of time!-and not a monad yet!  Minds higher than ours can separate each of these particles, and yet perhaps they find not the indivisible, but assign over to other minds the endless task.

With such thoughts let us return to our first point, and remark that the star tens of billions of miles distant, one billion eight hundred million miles in diameter, is but a monad when compared with the creations of the vast universe of God!

Here the mind sinks within itself, and gladly relinquishes the herculean task of endeavoring to comprehend, for a single moment, a fractional part of the stupendous whole.

Deep below us, high above us, far as the eye of the mind can see around us, are the works of our Creator, marshalled in countless hosts.  All animated by his presence, all breathed upon by his life, inspired by his divinity, fostered by his love, supported by his power.

And in all things there is beauty-sunbeams and rainbows; fragrant flowers whose color no art can equal.  In every leaf, every branch, every fibre, every stone, there is a perfect symmetry, perfect adaptation to the conditions that surround it.  And thus it is, from the minutest insect undiscernible by human eye, to the planet whose size no figures can represent.  Each and all the works of God order governs, symmetry moulds, and beauty adorns.