nclusion to which an Intelligence seated in it
might come respecting us? It occupies an extent of space millions of
times greater than that of our solar system; we are invisible from it,
and therefore absolutely insignificant. Would such an Intelligence think
it necessary to require for our origin and maintenance the immediate
intervention of God?

From the solar system let us descend to what is still more
insignificant--a little portion of it; let us descend to our own earth.
In the lapse of time it has experienced great changes. Have these been
due to incessant divine interventions, or to the continuous operation of
unfailing law? The aspect of Nature perpetually varies under our eyes,
still more grandly and strikingly has it altered in geological
times. But the laws guiding those changes never exhibit the slightest
variation. In the midst of immense vicissitudes they are immutable.
The present order of things is only a link in a vast connected chain
reaching back to an incalculable past, and forward to an infinite
future.

There is evidence, geological and astronomical, that the temperature of
the earth and her satellite was in the remote past very much higher than
it is now. A decline so slow as to be imperceptible at short intervals,
but manifest enough in the course of many ages, has occurred. The heat
has been lost by radiation into space.

The cooling of a mass of any kind, no matter whether large or small, is
not discontinuous; it does not go on by fits and starts; it takes
place under the operation of a mathematical law, though for such mighty
changes as are here contemplated neither the formula of Newton, nor that
of Dulong and Petit, may apply. It signifies nothing that periods of
partial decline, glacial periods, or others of temporary elevation, have
been intercalated; it signifies nothing whether these variations may
have arisen from topographical variations, as those of level, or from
periodicities in the radiation of the sun. A periodical sun would act as
a mere perturbation in the gradual decline of heat. The perturbations of
the planetary motions are a confirmation, not a disproof, of gravity.

Now, such a decline of temperature must have been attended by
innumerable changes of a physical character in our globe. Her dimensions
must have diminished through contraction, the length of her day must
have lessened, her surface must have collapsed, and fractures taken
place along the lines of least res