396 THE STELLAR UNIVERSE. 



Yet the admission of the nebular hypothesis, were it conclusively established, 

 would have no more real effect on the source of the wisdom of creation than 

 the admission of the theory of gravitation. Every step we make in the gene- 

 ralization of the phenomena supplied by observation only transfers our view 

 of the first cause one degree higher. In the present case we may ask with a 

 distinguished contemporary, " how came the sun and its atmosphere to have 

 such materials, such motions, such a constitution, that these beneficent conse- 

 quences followed from their primordeal condition ? How came the parent 

 vapor, if vapor it were, to be thus capable of coherence, separation, contraction, 

 solidification ? How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repulsion, con- 

 densation, 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 lu- 

 minous vapor to be at a subsequent period solids and fluids of many various 

 kinds ? What but design and intelligence prepared and tempered this vari- 

 ously-existing element, so that it should by its natural changes produce such 

 an orderly system ?" 



And, we may further ask, to what else except intelligence and wisdom, 

 prompted by beneficence, can be ascribed the fact that the source of light and 

 heat should be placed in the central mass, while the detached revolving masses 

 are deprived of this quality ? or why is it that the apparatus for reflected light 

 augments in power and efficiency as the planet to be supplied with light is 

 more and more remote from the sun ? and why is the distribution of land and 

 water on the surface of the globe so admirably regulated ? and whence has 

 arisen the wonderful adaptation of the quantity and density of the air, and the 

 mechanical and physical and chemical properties of that fluid to all the ex- 

 isting qualities and conditions of the world ? These are manifestations of 

 design, wisdom, goodness, and power, which are not reached or pretended to 

 be reached, by any theory or hypothesis that the human mind has ever yet 

 devised, save that only which we find in the character of the Most High, 

 whether imparted by the voice of revelation or written on the face of nature. 



