n.
Every earnest thinker who climbs the shining worlds as steps to
a higher thought is trying to solve the problem God has given us
to do.

[Page 179]
IX.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep."--_Genesis_ i. 2.

[Page 180]
"A dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place are lost."--MILTON.

"It is certain that matter is somehow directed, controlled, and
arranged; while no material forces or properties are known to be
capable of discharging such functions."--LIONEL BEALE.

"The laws of nature do not account for their own origin."--JOHN
STUART MILL.

[Page 181]
IX.

_THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS._

The method by which the solar system came into its present form
was sketched in vast outline by Moses. He gave us the fundamental
idea of what is called the nebular hypothesis. Swedenborg, that
prodigal dreamer of vagaries, in 1734 threw out some conjectures of
the way in which the outlines were to be filled up; Buffon followed
him closely in 1749; Kant sought to give it an ideal philosophical
completeness; as he said, "not as the result of observation and
computation," but as evolved out of his own consciousness; and
Laplace sought to settle it on a mathematical basis.

It has been modified greatly by later writers, and must receive
still greater modifications before it can be accepted by the best
scientists of to-day. It has been called "the grandest generalization
of the human mind;" and if it shall finally be so modified as to pass
from a tentative hypothesis to an accepted philosophy, declaring
the modes of a divine worker rather than the necessities of blind
force, it will still be worthy of that high distinction.

Let it be clearly noted that it never proposes to do more than to
trace a portion of the mode of working which brought the universe
from one stage to another. It only goes back to a definite point,
never to absolute beginning, nor to nothingness. It takes matter
from [Page 182] the hand of the unseen power behind, and merely
notes the progress of its development. It finds the clay in the
hands of an intelligent potter, and sees it whirl in the process of
formation into a vessel. It is not in any sense necessarily
atheistic, any more than it is to affirm that a tree grows by vital
processes in the sun