The stars are suns, and we can trace amongst them the working of the laws which govern our sun and his family. In these universal laws we must perceive intelligence; something of which the laws are but as the expressions of the will and power. The laws of Nature cannot be regarded as primary or independent causes of the phenomena of the physical world. We come, in short, to a Being beyond Nature--its author, its God; infinite, inconceivable, it may be, and yet one whom these very laws present to us with attributes showing that our nature is in some way a faint and far-cast shadow of His, while all the gentlest and the most beautiful of our emotions lead us to believe that we are as children in His care and as vessels in His hand. Let it then be understood--and this for the reader's special attention--that when natural law is spoken of here, reference is made only to the mode in which the Divine Power is exercised. It is but another phrase for the action of the ever-present and sustaining God.
Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but the seeking of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. The endeavour to explain any events in her history, however grand or mysterious these may be, is only to sit like a child at a mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things which passed before we were born; and in modesty and reverence we may even inquire if there be any trace of the origin of that marvellous arrangement of the universe which is presented to our notice. In this inquiry we first perceive the universe to consist of a boundless multitude of bodies with vast empty spaces between. We know of certain motions among these bodies; of other and grander translations we are beginning to get some knowledge. Besides this idea of locality and movement, we have the equally certain one of a former soft and more diffused state of the materials of these bodies; also a tolerably clear one as to gravitation having been the determining cause of both locality and movement. From these ideas the general one naturally suggested to us is--a former stage in the frame of material things, perhaps only a point in progress from some other, or a return from one like the present--universal space occupied with gasiform matter. This, however, was of irregular constitution, so that gravitation caused it to break up and gather into patches, producing at once the relative localities of astral and solar systems, and the movements which they have since observed, in themselves and with regard to each other--from the daily spinning of single bodies on their own axes, to the mazy dances of vast families of orbs, which come to periods only in millions of years.