through which our earth has passed.

Leaving these exceptions, we may next inquire into the relevant purposes
of the nebular hypothesis, supposing its assumptions acquiesced in. Like
the fanciful theories of the ancient philosophers, it seems only to
involve a profitless topic of controversy, without solving natural
phenomena. It does not unravel the mystery of the beginning, brings us
no nearer to the first creative force. Like a good chemist, previous to
analysis, the author first throws all matter into a state of solution;
but granting him his fire-mist and nuclei in the midst, how or whence
came this condition and arrangement of nature? What was its pre-existing
state? or, if that be answered, how or whence was that preceding state
educed, for it, too, must have had one prior to it? So that the mind
makes no advances by such inquiries, is lost in a maze that can have no
end, because it has no beginning; and, like Noah's messenger, for want
of a resting place, is compelled to return to the first starting point.
Easier, and quite as satisfactory, it seems to believe, as we have been
taught to believe, that the celestial spheres were at once perfect and
entire, projected into space from the hands of the maker, than that they
were elaborated out of luminous vapour by gravity and condensation.
Hopeless inquiry is thus foreclosed, an inquisition that cannot be
answered, silenced, and removed out of the pale of discussion.

It is not from any attribute of the Deity being impugned that the
hypothesis is objectionable. Design and intelligence in the creation are
left paramount as before, and our impression of the skill exercised, and
the means employed, only transferred to another part of the work. He who
produced the primordial condition the author supposes, who filled space
with such a mist, composed of such materials, subjected to such laws,
such constitution, that sun, moon, and stars necessarily resulted from