184 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



few observations upon this nebular hypothesis, as 

 it may be termed. 



2. If we grant, for a moment, the hypothesis, 

 it by no means proves that the solar system was 

 formed without the intervention of intelligence 

 and design. It only transfers our view of the 

 skill exercised, and the means employed, to an- 

 other part of the work. For, how came the sun 

 and its atmosphere to have such materials, such 

 motions, such a constitution, that these conse- 

 quences followed from their primordial condition ? 

 How came the parent vapour thus to be capable of 

 coherence, separation, contraction, solidification ? 

 How came the laws of its motion, attraction, re- 

 pulsion, condensation, to be so fixed, as to lead 

 to a beautiful and harmonious system in the end ? 

 How came it to be neither too fluid nor too 

 tenacious, to contract neither too quickly nor too 

 slowly, for the successive formation of the several 

 planetary bodies ? How came that substance, 

 which at one time was a luminous vapour, to be 

 at a subsequent period, solids and fluids of many 

 various kinds ? What but design and intelligence 

 prepared and tempered this previously existing 

 element, so that it should by its natural changes 

 produce such an orderly system ? 



And if in this way we suppose a planet to be 

 produced, what sort of a body would it be? 

 something, it may be presumed, resembling a 



