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them?-If He has those attributes, and these passions exist, (which are but too evident in producing misery among mankind,) they must have arisen from the materials acted upon, and not from the volition of an all-powerful and benevolent Deity. If He produced them when He had power to do otherwise, our ideas of goodness and benevolence, though finite, startle at the application of those attributes to Him; and we must still consider him, with the Athenians whom St. Paul addressed, as "the unknown God"!!!

It may be asked, how matter can produce passions, or have any influence in the production of moral evil?

From looking at matter in the mass, we are led to consider it inert; but when we examine it philosophically, we find it has affinities, partialities, and motions. That fluids can act upon fluids or solids, or solids upon solids, and that the electric fluid appears to be an agent under the controul of Deity for regulating the motions of both.

The metal potassium burns on the surface of water by attracting its oxygen, decomposing it, and producing motion in its component parts. Chlorate of potash, phosphorus, and sulphuric acid act on each other under water, producing flame and momotion by their affinities. Lime and salammoniac, two solid substances that separately have but little smell, produce, when united, by their action on each other, an altogether different effluvia from that which they possessed separately; their atoms are put in motion, and being lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, affect our organs of smelling. The chloric acid destroys colour in the process of bleaching, by decomposing the water into its constituent parts; the hydrogen, being attracted by the chlorine, and the oxygen by the colouring matter of the cloth, producing, by their affinities, complicated motions, change of appearance, and alterations in their qualities. Innumerable other facts might be added; but, in short, in combustión, de

composition, crystallization, and every other chemical change, motion is produced by matter acting upon matter, through the allpervading medium of electricity.

If previously positive, it becomes negative, and vice versa. Heat excites electricity, and in every chemical change there is a change of temperature. Acids and alkalies, put in the same state of electricity by the galvanic apparatus, will not neutralize each other. Hence it may be reasonably inferred that, what we call chemical affinities are merely electrical attractions. Philosophers differ in opinion upon the conclusions drawn from the premises; but the experiments of Sir Humphrey Davy and Berzelius go far to support it, throwing aside the distinctions of resinous and vitreous, as applied to the electric fluid.

From much reflection I have been led to the conclusion, that light does not proceed from the sun, but that it is the result of continued streams of positive and negative electricity meeting in the atmosphere; the

former proceeding from the sun, the latter from the earth, and that the intensity of light and heat depends on the medium of the galvanic circle and the angle at which the streams meet.

That combustion, as in a common fire, depends on myriads of galvanic circles, forming or decomposing carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, &c., which heat excites into action; the centre of the fire being the hottest. If heat depended upon the decomposition of the oxygen of the atmosphere, (according to the present popular theory,) the outside of the fire would be hotter than the inside of it, as the oxygen gas would be much more dense on the surface than it could be by rarefaction in the centre. That oxygen gas is not decomposed in the well-known experiment of suspending heated iron wire in a jar of oxygen gas, that the light, increased heat, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, &c., the results of the experiment, are produced by the heated wire exciting the galvanic circles in its compo

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nent parts; the iron, carbon, &c., connected with it, being in one state of electricity and the oxygen gas in another. In all chemical changes there is a change of electricity, and an increase or dimunition of sensible heat. Positive and negative electricity, meeting on an inflamable base, produce light and heat. Electricity in air and in vacuum produces light, as has been exhibited in many experiments. Heat cannot be produced by substances in the same states of electricity. Air, when compressed, gives out heat and light, and is not so intense on the summit of a mountain as in the valley beneath. When heat is sensible it is called the matter of heat; when it can be evolved from substances in which it is not sensible, it is called latent heat. If it is matter, where does it exist in a simple and uncombined state? In combustion and crystalization it is evolved; but always, in combination with matter, that can be analysed and weighed : but heat eludes both these operations-we have no proof of its existence, we cannot

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