death has been very busy (for plants of large growth soon perish in the absence of sunshine, and occasional attendant accidents will carry off some of the finny pets), how life has been equally active on the other side, for such an aquarium will be a hundred times richer in those spontaneous growths we have already spoken of, and visible forms of infusoria and true zoophytes will abound, and every class will be more fully represented, down even to the twilight monad.
Though this paper must have an end, there is no end to the teaching of the aquarium. It is a watery microcosm of living and dead wonders, and we need not marvel that the balance of life and death may be observed in its succession of changes, because all the physical forces of the universe are locked up within a single bead of dew, and all the functions of organic creation are comprised in the economy of a monas termo. If God so ordains that life shall be constantly soaring from the tomb, if the story of the Phœnix ceases to be a fable, need man, the victim of doubts and fears, ever fail in his trust of that blessed promise, that "this mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruption?" Science may fix his mind on the appreciation of God's wisdom and power as he reads the handwriting of the Almighty in Nature, but through faith in another revelation must we hope to exclaim, triumphantly, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Or, to pass from divine to human consolations, we may take up the apostrophe of the great Raleigh, and say: "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! what none have dared, thou hast done; what none have attempted, thou hast accomplished; thou hast gathered all the might, majesty, and meanness of mankind, and hast covered them with these two words, 'hic jacet.'" Nature's children have a dread of death, but Nature herself is in friendly compact with the master of silence. If the types which are the ideas of God have survived from the oldest rocks to this present hour, will not the spirit which lives on ideas, and evolves them as the aquarium evolves its throng of animalcules, live forever? It is not hard to believe with Tennyson—
"That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."
"The pile" will be complete when God's purpose is fulfilled in man, to whom it is given to hope after eternal life, and with eyes of faith to pierce through the veil, and behold the wondrous things of eternity.—Recreative Science.
