Many a merry Christmas to these my friends!
The Miracle Of Life.
Of all Miracles, the most wonderful is that of Life—the common, daily life which we carry about with us, and which every where surrounds us. The sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons, are as nothing compared with it. Life—the soul of the world, but for which creation were not!
It is our daily familiarity with Life, which obscures its wonders from us. We live, yet remember it not. Other wonders attract our attention, and excite our surprise; but this, the great wonder of the world, which includes all others, is little regarded. We have grown up alongside of Life, with Life within us and about us; and there is never any point in our existence, at which its phenomena arrest our curiosity and attention. The miracle is hid from us by familiarity, and we see it not.
Fancy the earth without Life!—its skeleton ribs of rock and mountain unclothed by verdure, without soil, without flesh! What a naked, desolate spectacle,—and how unlike the beautiful aspect of external nature in all lands! Nature, ever-varied and ever-changing—coming with the spring, and going to sleep with the winter—in constant rotation. The flower springs up, blooms, withers, and falls, returning to the earth from whence it sprung, leaving behind it the germs of future being; for nothing dies; not even Life, which only gives up one form to assume another. Organization is traveling in an unending circle.
The trees in summer put on their verdure; they blossom; their fruit ripens—falls; what the roots gathered up out of the earth returns to earth again; the leaves drop one by one, and decay, resolving themselves into new forms, to enter into other organizations; the sap flows back to the trunk; and the forest, wood, field, and brake compose themselves to their annual winter's sleep. In spring and summer the birds sang in the boughs, and tended their young brood; the whole animal kingdom rejoiced in their full bounding life; the sun shone warm, and nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter lays its cold chill upon this scene; but the same scene comes round again, and another spring recommences the same “never-ending, still beginning” succession of vital changes. We learn to expect all this, and become so familiar with it, that it seldom occurs to us to reflect how much harmony and adaptation there is in the arrangement—how much of beauty and glory there is every where, above, around, and beneath us.
But were it possible to conceive an intelligent being, abstracted from our humanity, endowed with the full possession of mind and reason, all at once set down on the earth's surface—how many objects of surpassing interest and wonder would at once force themselves on his attention. The verdant earth, covered with its endless profusion of forms of vegetable life, from the delicate moss to the oak which survives the revolutions of centuries; the insect and animal kingdom, from the gnat which dances in the summer's sunbeams, up to the higher forms of sentient being; birds, beasts of endless diversity of form, instinct, and color; and, above all, Man—“Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye;”—these would, to such an intelligence, be a source of almost endless interest.
It is life which is the grand glory of the world [pg 501] it was the consummation of creative power, at which the morning stars sang together for joy. Is not the sun glorious because there are living eyes to be gladdened by his beams? is not the fresh air delicious because there are living creatures to inhale and enjoy it? are not odors fragrant, and sounds sweet, and colors gorgeous, because there is the living sensation to appreciate them? Without Life, what were they all? What were a Creator himself, without life, intelligence, understanding, to know and adore Him, and to trace His finger in the works that He hath made?
Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings around us. Take the class of insects alone: of these, not fewer than 100,000 distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water, and examine it with a microscope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures. Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within the body of a larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality.