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6 EXPLANATIONS. 



the celestial bodies were brought about by the 

 Divine will, acting in the manner ofajixed order or 

 law, instead of any mode which we conceive of as 

 more arbitrary. It is a presumption which an 

 enlightened mind is altogether unable to resist, 

 when it sees that precisely similar eflfects are 

 every day produced by law on a small scale, as 

 when a drop of water spherifies, when the revolv- 

 ing hoop bulges out in the plane of its equator, 

 and the sling, swung round in the hand, increases 

 in speed as the string is shortened. The philo- 

 sopher, on observing these phenomena, and find- 

 ing incontestable proof that they are precisely of 

 the same nature as those attending the formation 

 and arrangement of worlds, learns his first great 

 lesson — that the natural laws work on the 

 minutest and the grandest scale indifferently; 

 that, in fact, there is no such thing as gi'eat and 

 small in nature, but world spaces are as a hair- 

 breadth, and a thousand years as one day. 

 Having thus all but demonstration that the 

 spheres were formed and arranged by natural law, 

 the nebular hypothesis becomes important, as 

 shadowing forth the process by which matter was 

 so transformed from a previous condition, but it is 



