se first link is rivetted
to the throne of GOD, divides itself into innumerable diverging branches,
which, like the nerves arising from the brain, permeate the most minute and
most remote extremities of the system, diffusing motion and sensation to
the whole. As every cause is superior in power to the effect, which it has
produced, so our idea of the power of the Almighty Creator becomes more
elevated and sublime, as we trace the operations of nature from cause to
cause, climbing up the links of these chains of being, till we ascend to
the Great Source of all things.

Hence the modern discoveries in chemistry and in geology, by having traced
the causes of the combinations of bodies to remoter origins, as well as
those in astronomy, which dignify the present age, contribute to enlarge
and amplify our ideas of the power of the Great First Cause. And had those
ancient philosophers, who contended that the world was formed from atoms,
ascribed their combinations to certain immutable properties received from
the hand of the Creator, such as general gravitation, chemical affinity, or
animal appetency, instead of ascribing them to a blind chance; the doctrine
of atoms, as constituting or composing the material world by the variety of
their combinations, so far from leading the mind to atheism, would
strengthen the demonstration of the existence of a Deity, as the first
cause of all things; because the analogy resulting from our perpetual
experience of cause and effect would have thus been exemplified through
universal nature.

_The heavens declare the glory of _GOD_, and the firmament sheweth his
handywork! One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another; they
have neither speech nor language, yet their voice is gone forth into all
lands, and their words into the ends of the world. Manifold are thy works,
_O LORD!_ in wisdom hast thou made them all._ Psal. xix. civ.

* * * * *

SECT. XL.

On the OCULAR SPECTRA of Light and Colours, by Dr. R. W. Darwin, of
Shrewsbury. Reprinted, by Permission, from the Philosophical
Transactions, Vol. LXXVI. p. 313.

_Spectra of four kinds._ 1. _Activity of the retina in vision._ 2.
_Spectra from defect of sensibility._ 3. _Spectra from excess of
sensibility_. 4. _Of direct ocular spectra._ 5. _Greater stimulus
excites the retina into spasmodic action._ 6. _Of reverse ocular
spectra._ 7. _Greater stimulus excites the