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cent saint; the slashing and slaughterous soldier has suddenly become an inoffensive peace-man of the most placid and Quaker-like demeanor. Professor Wilson thus enumerates its properties. "This allotropic phosphorus is red in color; heavier than the common kind; does not shine in the dark, nor melt at the heat of boiling water. It exhales no vapor or odor, is not oxidized in the air; does not change oxygen into ozone; is chemically indifferent towards other elements; may be handled with impunity, or carried exposed in the pocket; and is not poisonous when administered in doses a hundred times greater than would be fatal in the common form." It is torpid, or in a state of profound slumber. And though no amount of shouting, shaking, or tickling will awaken the sleeper, still it is not the slumber of death. Try, then, the virtue of fire; and as the heat reaches five hundred degrees, the slumberer is aroused; he leaps up in a raging passion, seizes his deadly weapons, and it is now necessary for the intruder to beware.

But where is the sorcerer who can bind this furious creature in his all-subduing spell? Again it is the sun. A thin layer of phosphorus, in the active state, is sealed between two plates of glass, and exposed to the sun in the solar spectrum. In the violet region where the chemical power is highest, active phosphorus is changed to the passive state. But the crucible of the sun is the green vegetable leaf. Botany explains that the thousand rootlets of the plant gather up the little chemical particles from the soil, to be worked up in the vegetable factory, and, among others, compounds of phosphorus. These are carried

up to the leaf in the sap, and then chemistry tells us, that they are decomposed by the sunbeam, phophorus is set free, thrown into the passive state, and then laid up in the nutritive substances destined for the food of man. United with certain oily compounds, it is introduced into the living system, passes into the circulation, and though bathed in arterial blood, is not acted on or oxidized by it. It is neutral and inert, ready to be borne whithersoever it is intended. to go. There is a gradation of values among the parts of the living organism. Some perform subordinate services, others are of a nobler rank. The nervous system is highest in the scale of importance; and that is the destination of passive allotropic phosphorus. The ultimate nerve-filaments are of almost inconceivable minuteness. They are only half the thickness of the finest fibre spun by the silkworm. Five thousand of them might be laid side by side within the breadth of an inch. Yet these wondrously fine threads, which constitute the telegraph system of the body, and transmit despatches in all directions; these lines of more than gossamer delicacy are in reality tubes or pipes containing this phosphorized, oily pulp. In the brain, also, the phosphorized compounds are stored away in large proportion,—they are essential constituents of the cerebral matter. In every fifty ounces of nerve and brain matter, forty ounces are pure water; five or six ounces are fatty substance, and there is one ounce of pure phosphorus. The average weight of the brain of man is forty-five ounces; nearly one ounce of this element, therefore, is distributed through the cerebral region. The brain

is the organ of intellection; and we now begin to perceive the exalted office of this remarkable constituent. I said that the four organic elements .were elevated to a high honor; but in this elemental hierarchy, phosphorus seems to have attained a still loftier distinction. It seems to be the last, most intimate link which connects the worlds of matter and mind. It aids to carry forward our feeling, willing, and thinking operations. In the passive condition it waits to perform its grand function. At the proper signal, and in the twinkling of an eye, it drops the impassive mask, and rushes into the embrace of oxygen, literally flaming, that thoughts may breathe and words may burn. And thus we find at last, that the light-bearer of the old alchemist is transmuted and transformed in the very laboratory of the soul. As has been beautifully remarked, how fitting that it should shine in the dark, it is the symbol of its physiological destiny. It is proper, indeed, that passive phosphorus, upon which the mind first impresses itself, should owe its birth to the sun, and be rocked to sleep among flowers.

How mind and matter are joined, we do not know; nor, indeed, the ultimate how, or essential innermost cause of any phenomena. We are confounded in the presence of a falling stone or a burning candle. There are everywhere limits which the mind cannot pass. We may learn the conditions of the fall of the stone, and generalize them into the universal principles or laws of descending bodies; or we may elucidate the facts of the burning candle, and from these, rise to the laws of combustion; but the underlying essences, the

occult causations, transcend the grasp of our faculties. So with the mind and its instrument; how they are associated we do not know, but much of their conditions we may understand, they are proper matters of inquiry. And thus it has been found, that no intellectual operation can take place except it be attended with the oxidation of phosphorus. I do not say that mental operations arise, or originate in material changes; but only that, in the action of mind on the external world, these chemical changes inter

vene.

And thus the consideration of these singular properties of matter, opens the doorway to the temple of mind, and unfolds to us the most august contemplation that can engage the powers of human thought. For what facts of our nature are so grand and awful, as those which concern the alliance of the spiritual and material? And what part of the creation of God is to be approached with such awe, such solemn and unspeakable interest, as the human brain. Is it not the crown of the universe, an institution of the Almighty for the management of the affairs of the world? In this narrow chamber, which is so small that a man's hand may cover it, what grand events transpire! Within its walls occur the sublimest order of phenomena. The thoughts that have revolutionized the world, originated here. Every achievement which sheds glory upon the race, projects which involve all nations in their operations, impulses to the ends of the earth, and send undulations of power down the current of time for thousands of years, originate here. Nay, did not all inven

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tions and discoveries, all arts, sciences, literatures, and civilizations come into existence first in the human brain?

It is customary to point to the heavens as the sublimest object that can engage human attention; and certainly the contemplation of its magnificent scenery must ever awaken the profoundest wonder. Those ponderous revolvent orbs, sweeping through the shoreless amplitudes, as if hastening into the vortex of chaos; and yet returning through their long celestial circuits with the punctuality of the all-controlling; those gorgeous galaxies of stars, sunk so deep in the abysses of space, as to be descried only by the telescope; what are they all but types of the infinite,fit and fearful emblems of eternity. And yet I point you to an object grander far than all these, and which may kindle within us a still more exalted order of emotions. It is the little organ in which that magnificent scheme is registered, miniatured, and reproduced. The cerebral matter receives in its plastic substance the minute representation of that majestic universe. Those everlasting heavens, with all their magnitudes, distances, harmonies and splendors, are duplicated in the brain of the astronomer. He deals with the transcript photographed upon the tablets of his brain. We are told of the glory of the primitive creation; but what should we know of it, if, in all its fidelity of aspect and fulness of reality, the universe were not re-created in this living alembic of thought? The human brain! It is, indeed a laboratory of wonders, the master-piece of the Most High.

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