So, too, we had observed for some centuries the forms of the orbits in which the heavenly bodies move, and we had found these to be ellipses with a very small eccentricity. But why this was the form of those orbits no one could even conjecture. If any person, the most deeply skilled in mathematical science, and the most internally convinced of the universal prevalence of design and contrivance in the structure of the universe, had been asked what reason there was for the planets moving in ellipses so, nearly approaching to circles, he could not have given any good reason, at least beyond a guess. The force of gravitation, even admitting that to be, as it were, a condition of the creation of matter, would have made those bodies revolve in ellipses of any degree of eccentricity just as well, provided the angle and the force of projection had been varied. Then, why was this form rather, than any other chosen? No one knew; yet no one doubted that there was ample reason for it. Accordingly the sublime discoveries of Lagrange and La Place have shown us that this small eccentricity is one material element in the formula by which it is shown that all the irregularities of the system are periodical, and that the deviation never can exceed a certain amount on either hand.
But, again, while we are ignorant of this, perhaps the most sublime truth in all science, we were always arguing as if the system had an imperfection, as if the disturbing forces of the different planets and the sun, acting on one another, constantly changed the orbits of each planet, and must, in a course of ages, work the destruction of the whole planetary arrangement which we had contemplated with so great admiration and with awe. It was deemed enough if we could show that this derangement must be extremely slow, and that, therefore, the system might last for many more ages without requiring any interposition of omnipotent skill to preserve it by rectifying its motions. Thus one of the most celebrated writers above cited argues that, “from the nature of gravitation and the concentricity of the orbits, the irregularities produced are so slowly operated in contracting, dilating and inclining those orbits, that the system may go on for many thousand years before any extraordinary interference becomes necessary in order to correct it.” And Dr. Burnett adds, that “those small irregularities cast no discredit on the good contrivance of the whole.” Nothing, however, could cast greater discredit if it were as he supposed, and as all men previous to the late discoveries supposed; it was only, they rather think, a “small irregularity,” which was every hour tending to the destruction of the whole system, and which must have deranged or confounded its whole structure long before it destroyed it. Yet now we see that the wisdom, to which a thousand years are as one day, not satisfied with constructing a fabric which might last for “many thousand years without His interference,” has so formed it that it may thus endure forever.