ON THE CREATION AND GOD. H 



striking and suggestive point of view, from which it 

 claims a further and a special consideration. 



According to this distinguished physicist, the sun and 

 the heat of the sun were produced some millions of years 

 ago by the fall together of its materials from a state of 

 wide diffusion, as a cloud of stones and dust and gaseous 

 matter. The shock of its atoms, and the mutual collision 

 of its smaller constituent bodies and masses under the 

 action of gravitation, gradually warmed and lit up the 

 nebulous mass, while the final rush together of the whole 

 immense materials with prodigious velocities resulted, by 

 the law of the convertibility of energy, in a vast develop- 

 ment of heat in a single condensed mass, which formed 

 the sun. 



In like manner, the fall together of the earth's 

 materials millions of years ago, produced the earth at 

 first at white heat, like the sun ; but as the earth's con- 

 stituents fell in smaller quantity, from less distances, and 

 with consequent less velocities, the amount of heat, 

 though great, was far less than in the case of the sun. 

 Accordingly, the earth cooled down long since, while the 

 sun, though lavishly spending heat from the beginning, 

 will not be reduced to the earth's temperature for 

 millions of years to come. 



In the same way, our moon and all the other planets, 

 with their moons, were produced the meteoric showers 

 and the comets, probably of meteoric 'composition, still 

 existing to remind us of the like former condition of all 

 the other bodies of the solar system. 



Such is the theory of Thomson respecting the origin 

 of the sun and planets. But there is no mention here of 

 rings of vapour, and in other respects we are a good way 

 from the theory of Laplace. It is, in fact, so far, a 

 different and a better hypothesis. It explains the sun's 



