ASTRONOMY. 249 



N(>r is this the whole, nor indeed the chief part of what 

 astronomy teaches. By bringing reason to bear upon obser- 

 vation, the acutest reasoning upon the exactest observation, 

 the astronomer has been able, out of the " mystic dance," 

 and the confusion — for such it is — under which the motions 

 of the heavenly bodies present themselves to the eye of a 

 mere gazer upon the skies, to elicit their order and their real 

 paths. 



Our knowledge, therefore, of astronomy is admirable, 

 though imperfect ; and, amid the confessed desiderata and 

 desideranda which impede our investigation of the wisdom 

 of the Deity in these the grandest of his works, there are to 

 be found, in the phenomena, ascertained circumstances and 

 law^s sufficient to indicate an intellectual agency in three of 

 its principal operations, namely, in choosing, in determining, 

 in regulating : in choosing, out of a boundless variety of sup- 

 positions M^hich were equally possible, that which is bene- 

 ficial ; in detcrmming what, left to itself, had a thousand 

 chances against conveniency, for one in its favor ; in regu- 

 lating subjects, as to quantity and degree, which, by their 

 nature, were unlimited with respect to either. It will be 

 our business to offer, under each of these heads, a few instan- 

 ces, such as best admit of a popular explication. 



I. Among proofs of choice, one is, fixing the source ol 

 light and heat in the centre of the system. The sun is 

 ignited and luminous ; the planets, which move round him, 

 are cold and dark. There seems to be no antecedent neces- 

 sity for this order. The sun might have been an opaque 

 mass ; some one, or two, or more, or any, or all the planets, 

 globes of fjre. There is nothing in the nature of the heav- 

 enly bodies which requires that those which are stationary 

 should be on fire, that those which move should be cold ; 

 for, in fact, comets are bodies on fire, or at least capable oi 

 the most intense heat, yet revolve round a centre ; nor docs 

 this order obtain between the primary planets and th^ir sec- 

 ondaries, which are all opaque. When we consider, there- 

 11# 



