SUMMARY OF EVIDENCES. 89 



also to the most distant clusters of stars, thus binding all sys- 

 tems and firmaments together in one family relation, and re- 

 ferring them to a common parentage considering, therefore, 

 that our own solar system is of itself a little universe, exem- 

 plifying all the principles involved in the- great universe, of 

 \vhich it is a child and antitype and considering, as we may 

 now well do, that the nebular hypothesis of creation is the 

 correct one, and that laws are uniform throughout the whole 

 realm of being the preponderance of analogical evidence 

 must, we think, be admitted to be in favor of the general 

 truthfulness of the theory here propounded. For, in the first 

 place (admitting the nebular hypothesis), our own sun, en- 

 throned in the midst of our system, affords an ocular proof 

 that matter in a primitively diffused state, and obeying the im- 

 pulses breathed into it from the Divine spiritual source, will 

 assume a central, gravitating, and rotating Nucleus ; and this 

 hints &t the great Nucleus, which, on the same principles, seem- 

 ingly must have necessarily been formed in the midst of the 

 originally chaotic materials of the whole universe. Moreover, 

 the rings of Saturn show the forms naturally first assumed by 

 the attracted and emanated materials of a central body, which 

 forms will be of varying distances "from the central body, ac- 

 cording to their specific degrees of density or levity. Some 

 such forms seemingly must have necessarily been elaborated, 

 not only by our own central sun, but by all other suns of suf- 

 ficient magnitude and activity, and especially by the great Sun 

 of all suns. But such annular forms, of course, can be pre- 

 served through subsequent condensation, only in case of the 

 nicest equilibrium in their materials and motions, such as is 

 characteristic of Saturn's rings. If there is 'any considerable 

 inequality in either of these particulars the annular mass, in 

 contracting, will inevitably resolve itself into the form of one 



