1908-9. | A NEBULAR THEORY OF CREATION. ° 453 
seem to be under the spell of that ubiquitous force that imperiously 
demands submission. Its action may be conceived of as irresistible waves, 
pulses or undulations or alternating swings of a pendulum, producing on 
the material plane, crest and trough, flux and reflux or ebb and flow, 
maximum and minimum cycles, epicycles, series, periods, times and 
seasons in endless succession. Even those phenomena which are usually 
considered to be preventible, such as epidemics, homicides, suicides, 
wars, commercial stringency, financial panics, etc., it may be said, 
simulate periodicity and make attempt to recur at stated intervals, as 
though they were due, and must perforce obey the impulse. I now enter 
upon the main subject. 
Wh 
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WHat ARE NEBULA? 
There are to be seen among the stars many small patches of luminous 
cloudlike appearance, which, on account of their hazy undefined aspect, 
have been called Nebula. Some few of these objects may be seen with 
the naked eye provided one knows just where to look, and doesn’t expect 
to see too much, and I understand there are thousands to be seen by the 
aid of telescopes. They are of varied configuration, scarcely two exactly 
of the same form. ‘These little cloudlets have given rise to much specula- 
tion as to their composition, temperature, and purpose. The prevailing 
opinion seems to be that they consist of material designed to be manu- 
factured into new worlds when the need arises, hence they are often re- 
ferred to as star dust. Such opinion is not free from difficulties, however, 
for some of them have been resolved into points of light by the aid of high 
power lenses, thus almost compelling the conclusion that those so reduced 
are whole stellar systems away out in space far beyond the boundary of 
this cluster in which our own sun is one of the stars. But that wonderful 
little instrument, the spectroscope, has decided that the greater number 
of them are within the limits of our cluster as stars may be seen through 
them, and some change in form has been detected in many of them, and so 
it seems pretty safe to say they are as said before, material for new crea- 
tions, or I would suggest that a moiety of those mysterious bodies are 
probably the debris of dead worlds in the process of dissolution, whilst the 
other half are the makings of new worlds on the way up—this by the way. 
We will now take one of those luminous clouds and try to follow it in 
the course of preparation under the direction of the supreme chemist and 
mechanician to take on the function of a solar system. It may help us if 
we can in imagination transpose all the matter of our solar system into a 
nebula such as it was I have no doubt, before our world, sun and moon 
were created, occupying the space, and more perhaps, that is now utilized 
