feeders can hardly be estimated: the insect
world alone has been calculated to contain
five hundred and sixty thousand species of
insects, of which the greater number feed on
plants. Thus man and the whole animal
world derive their nourishment from the
elements abstracted by the Plant-cell from
the air. Were not the elements so abstracted
in some way restored, this enormous drain of
certain materials must speedily have worked
a change on the face of the earth such as
would have unfitted it for the purposes of
animal and vegetable life. But ample
provision is made; when life ceases in the
animal, his organism becomes resolved into
the original materials out of which the plant
first was formed, and through it the animal.
Carbonic acid gas, ammonia and water are
given off, again to be absorbed by the Plant-cell,
again to become the food of the animal
and form part of his structure, again to pass
through the never-ending changes of material
existence, revolving through all earthly time
in ceaseless circles of vital action. The truth
thus arrived at throws a new light upon
the words "From dust hast thou come and
to dust shalt thou return" It adds fresh
sublimity to them. We return to dust; our
ashes are scattered abroad to the winds, over
the surface of the earth; but we know now
that this dust is not inactive: its term of
existence ends not here. It rises to walk
the earth again; to aid perhaps in peopling
the globe with fresh forms of beauty; to
assist in the performance of the vital
processes of the universe; to take a part in the
world's life. In this sense the words of
Goethe are strictly applicable —- "Death is
the parent of life."

       "Nothing of us that doth fade
        But doth suffer a slow change
        Into something rich and strange."

Regarding the action of the cell from this
wide point of view we arrive at a true estimate
of the nature of its functions. We see that the
only power which it possesses, as the artificer,
under God's great laws, of all animal and
vegetable organism, is a capability of altering
and modifying the forms and combinations of
already existing matter. We see that neither
plant nor animal can create anything, neither
can they annihilate: they can add nothing
to the world's materials, nor can they take
away the minutest particle. By a marvellous
power, which we admire without being able
to imitate, the vegetable produces its
appropriiate secretions by modifying certain
materials, and the animal organisation constructs
from these its own tissues; but neither plant
nor animal can make or destroy one single
atom of oxygen, or hydrogen, or carbon; they
have no power beyond modification.

We must tread here with reverential step;
for we have reached the utmost boundaries
of human science, and stand in the presence
of the Almighty Maker of all things, with
whom alone rests the power of creation or
annihilation.

       PHARISEES AND SINNERS.

He was the saint of the family, and the
model man of the neighbourhood. There
was not a charity that he did not subscribe
to, not a deputation that he did not entertain
—and they were hungry fellows generally,
who knew the comforting virtues of his
choice Madeira —he founded Sunday-schools
and Chapels-of-Ease as other men would build
barns, and he was the public purse of all the
ten parishes round. The poor called him a real
gentleman, and the ungodly a fine fellow;
while the elect looked solemn, and spoke of
"that pious man, Jacob Everett;" through
their noses for the most part. No one had an
ill word for him; excepting the landlord of
the Grapes, who declared with a mighty oath
that he was the "pest of the place, and would
ruin all Green Grove if he was left to do as
he liked." Notwithstanding this Bacchic
judgment, Jacob Everett was a good man;
weak, perhaps, but lovable in his very
weakness; sincere, gentle, generous, merciful;
puritanical in principle, but— as his younger
brother, the archdeacon, once said in full
vestry, when Jacob opposed him about the
penance of Hannah Brown —"sadly latitudinarian
in practice." Jacob, however, who loved
mercy and hated condemnation, went on his
own way, opening a wide door of forgiveness
to all sinners; closing to a narrow chink the
yawning gates of destruction which his
brother swung back wide enough for all man-
kind, saving the small band of the elect to
which he and his belonged.

The family was proud of Jacob. He was
an old bachelor and rich; and the Everetts
— albeit of the rigidest —liked wealth and
honoured pedigrees. They were grand people,
who practised humility in coaches, and
self-abasement in velvet; who denounced the
lusts of the flesh at state dinner-parties, over
champagne and pine-apples; but who believed
that eternal punishment was the doom of all
who entered a theatre or a ball-room. They
went to morning concerts of serious music,
and patronised oratorios. They thought it
sinful to be in love, and called it making
idols —so they married their children
comfortably among godly families with money,
and told, them that esteem was better than
romance. Miss Tabitha Everett was once
suspected of a tender partiality for young Mr,
Aldridge of Aldridge Park; but the family
hushed it up as a scandal, for unconverted
Mr. Aldridge kept a pack of hounds.
Afterwards, they married her to the Rector of
Green Grove, the Honourable and Reverend
Humdrummle Hibbert, eldest son of the
Dean, and heir to an un-apostolic fortune.
The Everetts were exceedingly undemonstrative.
Miss Tabitha accepted her husband,