ll amuse.

As it was thus with the end of our planet, so it was as regards her
origin. By degrees evidence began to accumulate casting a doubt on her
recent date, evidence continually becoming more and more cogent.
[Sidenote: Rise of the doctrine of illimitable age.] In no insignificant
manner did the establishment of the heliocentric theory, aided by the
discoveries of the telescope, assist in this result. As I have said, it
utterly ruined past restoration the doctrine of the human destiny of the
universe. With that went down all arguments which had depended on making
man the measure of things. Ideas of unexpected sublimity as to the scale
of magnitude on which the world is constructed soon enforced themselves,
and proved to be the precursors of similar ideas as to time. At length
it was perceived by those who were in the van of the movement that the
Bible was never intended to deliver a chronological doctrine respecting
the beginning any more than the end of things, and that those
well-meaning men who were occupied in wresting it from its true purposes
were engaged in an unhappy employment, for its tendency could be no
other than to injure the cause they designed to promote. Nevertheless,
so strong were the ancient persuasions, that it was not without a
struggle that the doctrine of a long period forced its way--a struggle
for the age of the earth, which, in its arguments, in its tendencies,
and in its results, forcibly recalls the preceding one respecting the
position of the earth; but, in the end, truth overrode all authority and
all opposition, and the doctrine of an extremely remote origin of our
planet ceased to be open to dispute.

In a scientific conception of the universe, illimitable spaces are of
necessity connected with limitless time.

[Sidenote: Indications depending on the progressive motion of light.]
The discovery of the progressive motion of light offered the means of an
absolute demonstration of this connexion. Rays emitted by an object, and
making us sensible of its presence by impinging on the eye, do not reach
us instantaneously, but consume a certain period in their passage.

If any sudden visible effect took place in the sun, we should not see it
at the absolute moment of its occurrence, but about eight minutes and
thirteen seconds later, this being the time required for light to cross
the intervening distance. All phenomena take place in reality anterior
to the moment at which we observe the