Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/295

Rh the harmonies of old Ocean when contemplated through the microscope; then every drop of water in the sea is discovered to be in tune with the hosts of heaven, for each stands forth a peopled world.

498. The microscope and the telescope.—Catching, as we contemplate the hosts of heaven through the telescope and the moving-creatures of the sea through the microscope, the spirit of Chalmers, and borrowing his fine imagery, let us draw a contrast between the glories of the heavens and the wonders of the insect world of earth and sea, as to the mind of a devout philosopher they are presented through these instruments: "One leads him to see a world in every atom, the other a system for every star. One shows him that this vast globe, with its mighty nations and multitudinous inhabitants, is but a grain of sand in the immensity of space; the other, that every particle of clay that lies buried in the depths of the sea has been a living habitation, containing within it the workshops of a busy population. One tells him of the insignificance of the world we inhabit; the other redeems it from that insignificance by showing in the leaves of the forest, in the flowers of the field, and in every drop of water in the sea, worlds as numberless as the sands on its shores, all teeming with life, and as radiant with glories as the firmament of heaven. One suggests that, beyond and above all that is visible to man, their are fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry to the remotest regions of space the impress of the Almighty hand; the other reminds us that, within and beneath all that minuteness which the eye of man has been able to explore, there may be a region of invisibles, and that, could we draw aside the veil that hides it from our senses, we should behold a theatre of as many worlds as astronomy has unfolded—a universe within the compass, of a point so small as to elude the highest power of the microscope, but where the wonder-working finger of the Almighty finds room for the exercise of his attributes—where He can raise another mechanism of worlds, filling and animating them all with the evidences of his glory." When we lay down the microscope, and study the organisms of the sea by the light of reason, we find grounds for the belief that the sea was made salt in the beginning,for the marine fossils that are found nearest the foundation of the geological column remind us that in their day the sea was salt; and then, when we take up the microscope again to study the foraminiferse, the diatomes, and corallines, and examine the