AND THEORY OF THE HEAVENS. 149 



although it is only an atom in comparison with what 

 remains concealed above or below our horizon, establishes 

 at least this fruitfulness of nature, which is unlimited, because 

 it is nothing else than the exercise of the Divine omni- 

 potence. Innumerable animals and plants are daily 

 destroyed and disappear as the victims of time; but not 

 the less does nature by her unexhausted power of repro- 

 duction, bring forth others in other places to fill up the 

 void. Considerable portions of the earth which we inhabit 

 are being buried again in the sea, from which a favourable 

 period had drawn them forth ; but at other places nature 

 repairs the loss and brings forth other regions which were 

 hidden in the depths of being in order to spread over them 

 the new wealth of her fertility. In the same way worlds 

 and systems perish and are swallowed up in the abyss of 

 eternity ; but at the same time creation is always busy 

 constructing new formations in the heavens, and advan- 

 tageously making up for the loss. 



We need not be astonished at finding a certain transi- 

 toriness even in the greatest of the works of God. All 

 that is finite, whatever has a beginning and origin, has 

 the mark of its limited nature in itself; it must perish 

 and have an end. The duration of a world has, by the 

 excellence of its construction, a certain stability in itself 

 which, according to our conceptions, approaches an endless 

 duration. Perhaps thousands, mayhap millions, of centuries 

 will not destroy it; but because the vanity which cleaves 

 to finite natures works constantly for their destruction, 

 eternity will contain in itself all the possible periods 

 required to bring about at last by gradual decay the 

 moment when the world shall perish. Newton, that great 

 admirer of the attributes of God from the perfection of 



