e show how they assumed
the form they present. We assign optical reasons for the brightness
or blackness of the cloud; we explain, on mechanical principles, its
drifting before the wind; for its disappearance we account on
the principles of chemistry. It never occurs to us to invoke the
interposition of the Almighty in the production and fashioning of this
fugitive form. We explain all the facts connected with it by physical
laws, and perhaps should reverentially hesitate to call into operation
the finger of God.

But the universe is nothing more than such a cloud--a cloud of suns and
worlds. Supremely grand though it may seem to us, to the Infinite and
Eternal Intellect it is no more than a fleeting mist. If there be a
multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, there is also a succession of
worlds in infinite time. As one after another cloud replaces cloud in
the skies, so this starry system, the universe, is the successor of
countless others that have preceded it--the predecessor of countless
others that will follow. There is an unceasing metamorphosis, a sequence
of events, without beginning or end.

If, on physical principles, we account for minor meteorological
incidents, mists and clouds, is it not permissible for us to appeal to
the same principle in the origin of world-systems and universes, which
are only clouds on a space-scale somewhat larger, mists on a time-scale
somewhat less transient? Can any man place the line which bounds
the physical on one side, the supernatural on the other? Do not our
estimates of the extent and the duration of things depend altogether
on our point of view? Were we set in the midst of the great nebula
of Orion, how transcendently magnificent the scene! The vast
transformations, the condensations of a fiery mist into worlds, might
seem worthy of the immediate presence, the supervision of God; here, at
our distant station, where millions of miles are inappreciable to our
eyes, and suns seem no bigger than motes in the air, that nebula is more
insignificant than the faintest cloud. Galileo, in his description of
the constellation of Orion, did not think it worth while so much as to
mention it. The most rigorous theologian of those days would have seen
nothing to blame in imputing its origin to secondary causes, nothing
irreligious in failing to invoke the arbitrary interference of God in
its metamorphoses. If such be the conclusion to which we come respecting
it, what would be the co