ly real and equally Divine, whether it be effected _mediately_ or
_immediately_, with or without the intervention of means, by the direct
and instantaneous exertion of Almighty power, or by the gradual and
successive operation of second causes acting according to established
laws. In the ordinary course of Providence, the method of mediate
production, gradual growth, and progressive development, may be observed
in innumerable instances; but it can never be justly held to exclude, or
even to obscure, the evidence of a presiding Intelligence and a
supernatural Power. On the contrary, it may serve rather to enhance that
evidence; since the very arrangements and provisions which have been
made with a view to the reproduction of every thing after its kind, may
bear on them the legible impress of a designing Mind and an ordaining
Will. Thus, year by year continually, the whole inhabitants of the world
are supported by the fruits of harvest, which are produced and matured
under the action of natural laws; yet every intelligent Theist ascribes
the result ultimately to the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, and
sees in the very processes by which it is brought to pass some of the
most signal proofs of these Divine perfections.

Now, as this method is followed in the work of Providence, which may be,
and often has been, described as a _continuous creation,_ and yet has no
tendency to destroy, or even to diminish, the evidence of a presiding
Intelligence in Nature, so no good reason can be assigned why it _might_
not also have been adopted in the production of planets and astral
systems, if so it had seemed good to Supreme Wisdom. If this method was
adopted for the propagation of plants and animals, no reason can be
given why it might not also have been adopted for the production of
planets and moons; nor would it in the latter case, any more than in the
former, impair the evidence of God's creative wisdom and power. For,
suppose it be possible that, by a marvellous process of self-evolution,
the material elements of Nature might assume new forms, so as to
originate a succession of new worlds and new planetary systems, without
the _immediate_ or _direct_ interposition of a Supernatural Will;
suppose that the earth and the other bodies now belonging to our own
system, were generated out of a prior condition of matter, existing in a
gasiform state and diffused through space as a Fire-Mist, subject to the
ordinary action of heat and