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    tiry 9 and in its pristine fluidity and purity is there by re-produced . The vegetable has thus been nourished , has arrived at maturity , and has passed through its several stages of deca , y and yet not an atom of the materials

    which contributed to its growth and support , has been worn out lost , or destroyed . Instead of contemplating an isolated vegetable , suppose we consider the case of a forest in

    an uninhabited country , which falling b y age , and sinking into a morass , was preserved from decomposition year after year , till by the pressure of the superincumbent strata and other causes ,

    it became at last transformed into a bed of mineral coal . At some distant period the wants of man perhaps induce him to explore the inmost recesses of this uncultivated spot , and specimens of this vegito mineral substance are brought asrain to the surface of the earth .

    In contemplating it in ihis state , it is natural to ask what has become of the primary elements of the several substances which promoted the nourishment of the tree , * iud contributed to form the wood y fibre , of which not even a vestige now remains ? These elements

    surely must have been consumed , at least some of then ) , we are ready to say , must have been destroyed , during this lapse of ages . K <> 9 we have reason to believe tliat , notwithstanding thousands of years may have revolved since

    * In popular language we talk of << destroying by fire , " hut in reality fire is incapable of producing destruction . On the contrary , every process of combustion produces an accumulation , not the annihilation of matter . Thus , highly rectified spirits of wine will burn away without leaving any residuum ; but if the spirit fyjS burnt within a large glass receiver , and the product be carefully collected , every ti-rfjt ounces of the alcohol will be found to have produced nine ounces of water , liie like quantity of lamp oil furnishes by combustion more than ten ounces of water . For further particulars , sec the Chem . Catechism , Chap . xa . p , 451 , ofr

    any other modern chemical work . f Rev . Robert Robinson , of Cambridge .

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    they were first entombed within the bowels of the earthy that not an atom has been lost , or deprived oi its pristine and inherent properties . Be it ' so .-- but

    whenever this coal comes to be employed as fuel , then nearly the whole will disappear and must be lost for ever . IMot so even then , for the act of combustion *

    js the very means appointed for the separation of the several elements of m&ttvr , whenever they may have performed the purposes for which they were united ; where - by they are put into a state the most favourable for the formation

    oi new combinations , and for the production of some of the most exquisite of nature ' s productions . By this process the carbon of the coal forms itself into carbonic

    acid gas , which is distributed

    through the air , to be absorbed by a new race of vegetables ; while the bitumenous part ? combines with the oxygen of the atmosphere to produce water , which dissolves in the air and rising therein

    to the upper regions , becomes condensed in the clouds , and falls in a state of pellucid purity , with the first shower of rain ; a screen - bly to that beautiful routine which nature hath established , and which will probably continue to the end of time .

    A late writer who has done himself immortal honour by the avowal of a rational system of Theology +, has the following beautiful remarks on this subject .

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    22 il /»\ Parkcs , on the Indestructibility of Matter .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1809, page 22, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1732/page/22/