Thunder-storms, which would at first thought appear to be of no utility to man, are indeed of great service; it is a common saying that thunder clears the air, this is the result of feeling and experience, but chemists have demonstrated the fact that a substance called "ozone" (a peculiar state of the element oxygen) is produced by thunder-storms; this ozone possesses the wonderful power of correcting (decomposing) putrid and unwholesome gases and exhalations which might otherwise produce fever, cholera, &c., it moreover destroys the ova or germs of many animals and vegetables which might otherwise be injurious to vegetation of more importance, the slight injury which these storms inflict here and there should weigh as nothing in the balance of utility with such universal good. Thus it is that the works of God have all the stamps of goodness, and this ought to inspire us with so much thankfulness as to overcome every fear for personal safety. Were these grand phenomena of nature, (as materialists would make us believe) the result of laws depending solely upon the physical co-operation of mere matter, good would be the exception instead of the rule, and most of them would produce effects, if not injurious at least not beneficial, but such is not the case, and throughout all the wonderful operations of nature there is not one but tends to good, for God often inflicts a small injury that a great good may result; we say a small injury, but it is questionable if the injury is not often a benefit, which appears to us injurious only because we do not understand it fully, every disturbing cause tends to produce some apparent disorder, such as storms, hurricanes, &c., some indeed so terrific as to destroy ships and houses, but what would be the result if the atmosphere were never disturbed from any cause? Why the lower stratum would become so loaded with impurities that it would be unfit to breathe, miasms and noxious gases would for ever remain a curse to the races of men and animals who might be doomed to inhabit such regions, but the very regions where these miasms are most likely to form are those about the tropics, and here it is that the greatest storms occur to remove them. Even the great deserts, which appear so useless to man, and which are uninhabitable to a great extent, have their office, and an important one too; they are to the earth what ventilators are to buildings, drawing the cold air from the poles to cool the regions that are too hot, and sending a current of heated air through the upper regions of the atmosphere (where it can do no injury to anything) to warm the colder parts of the earth, another instance of the wonderful care and goodness on the part of the Creator. The various and beautiful colours of the clouds, particularly at the rising and setting of the sun, are caused by refraction separating the white light into its primitive constituents, blue, red, and yellow light and their combinations, purple, orange, green, &c., and the more obliquely the rays impinge upon the earth the greater will be this refraction, this accounts for colours seldom appearing in the clouds at midday. But of all the beautiful effects of the refraction of light, the Rainbow (fig. 9) is the most glorious, it has been celebrated in all ages for its transient beauty. It is only seen when rain is falling in front of a brightly illuminated cloud, the sun being behind the spectator; it is a reflection of the sun by the cloud transmitted through millions of drops of rain, each of which acts as a prism, and produces rings of colour; for each of the rays of light (red, blue, and yellow) are refracted in unequal degrees, and therefore take separate places, forming the rings of colour seen in the rainbow.
FIG. 9.
The air is the great source from which all the nourishment of the organic creation, whether vegetable or animal, is derived; its carbonic acid is decomposed by the vegetables, which appropriate the carbon, turning over the oxygen to their companions, the animals; the ammonia of the air furnishes all the nitrogen of seeds and other nutritious parts of vegetables, which are eaten by animals; and water, the chief source of all nutriment, passes first from the air before it enters the soil, bringing both carbonic acid and ammonia to fertilise it. That all this nourishment is derived from the air is evidently shown by the formation and increase of mould in forests which have grown for centuries; this black mould is nearly all decayed vegetable matter, formed by the continuous fall and decay of leaves and trees, but which, instead of diminishing, increases. Now, where does all this come from? certainly not out of the earth, for it does not contain the necessary elements. Expose the surface of the bare earth for several centuries, and first small plants, then larger ones, will grow upon it, until the state of things described above takes place, the earth being just as rich in organic matter now as at the beginning, and much richer on the surface, where a thick stratum of black mould forms from the repeated fall and decay of leaves and wood; all the substance which the forest shall have drawn from the earth (with the exception of certain salts and earthy matters) must therefore have been derived from the air, which contains every ingredient necessary for its formation, while in the earth itself no kind of organic matter is ever found.
There was formerly a time when the carbonic acid of the air was in much greater abundance, and favoured the growth of those plants which thrive where there is plenty of water, as in swamps and marshes. They grew and decayed for a vast period of time, till a thick stratum of carbonaceous matter was deposited, which, after being buried (by some convulsion of nature) at a great depth, and pressed by the enormous weight of the superincumbent earth into a hard solid substance, is now being dug up by man, and forms that most valuable of all products of the mine, coal (fig. 10).
FIG. 10.
That coal is derived from decayed and altered vegetable matters, is pretty well proved; for many pieces of coal, if ground thin and subjected to the microscope, present a texture exactly such as can be seen in wood of the present date, and not only the ordinary structure, but in very many cases certain "dotted fibres," indicating that the wood belonged to the order of cone-bearing trees (Coniferæ), and there is but little doubt that the constant deposit of such wood and its slow and gradual decay was the real source of all our coal. How wonderful, and how good, is the foreknowledge of God! Just at a time when the great forests of the earth are fast disappearing, and with them the only other source of fuel for fires, this reserve of the old forests, which was then useless, serves man as a most excellent friend—more useful than gold or silver, more precious than diamonds or rubies! But this world is one of perpetual change, and the coal thus brought forth from the depths of the earth, is by man being rapidly restored to the air from whence—thousands of years ago—it was derived; and it is not coal alone which is thus being restored, but every organic being in the whole creation, for at their decay they all enter this vast mausoleum of the dead!
