494 Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 



The brilliant atmosphere of the sun may be a remainder, an 

 uncondensed portion of the nebulous vapour collected 

 around him, resembling the luminous vapour of lime in 

 the pea light, cooled down to a certain stage only, in conse- 

 quence of the much slower refrigeration of such an enor- 

 mous bulk. If so, by the operation of natural causes in their 

 ordinary course, and without any more direct intervention 

 of Divine power, the time will come, when, by a slow but 

 progressive farther cooling down, in the words of prophecy, 

 the sun shall be darkened, and the reflected light of the 

 moon shall not be given. 



In consequence of the earth thus losing its luminous and 

 heat-giving atmosphere, the distinctions of tropical and 

 polar temperatures would be introduced upon it. A change 

 would also likely ensue in the motion of the globe, greater 

 or less according to what may be supposed to have been 

 the nature of its previous motion. Thus the axis and time 

 of its diurnal, the orbit and period of its annual revolution, 

 may probably have been altered through the attractive 

 influences of the newly formed bodies. Then probably 

 commenced the present established duration of the day and 

 year, for the sun and moon were for signs and for seasons, 

 for days and for years, and to rule the day and the night. 

 There would also be a modification and increase of the 

 tides in the ocean by the change of direction in the attrac- 

 tive influences raising them ; and owing to the alteration 

 of its axis of revolution, and to the quickened velocity of its 

 motion, the earth would assume its present form of an oblate 

 spheroid, through the yielding of its crust to the centri- 

 fugal force of the fused matter beneath it. Thence would 

 result enormous upheavings and dislocations of the strata, 

 some of the greatest of which have been ascertained to have 

 taken place at this geological period, additional and higher 

 mountains and precipitous rocks, and, as a consequence of 

 these commotions, and of the impulses given by the ac- 



