Where did the fire come from? Did it
kindle of its own accord? Who put the fire and mist together? Was it red
hot enough from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler
now? How could an eternal red heat cool down? If it existed as a red hot
fire mist from eternity, until our atheist began to observe it beginning
to cool, why should it ever begin to cool at all, and why begin to cool
just then? Fill it as full of electricity, magnetism and odyle as you
please; do these afford any _reason_ for its very extraordinary conduct?
The utmost they do is to show you _how_ such a change took place, but
they neither tell you _where the original matter came from_, nor _why
its form was changed_. Change is an effect, and every effect requires a
cause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say
there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in the
mist itself. Had it a mind, and a will, and a perception of propriety?
Did the mist become sensible of the lightness of its behavior, and the
fire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on the
propriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, and
resolve to settle down into orderly, well-behaved suns and planets? In
the division of the property, _what became of the mind_? Did it go to
the sun, or to the moon, or to the pole star, or to this earth? Or, was
it clipped up into little pieces and divided among the stars in
proportion to their respective magnitudes; so that the sun may have,
say the hundredth part of an idea, and the moon a faint perception of
it? Did the fire mist's mind die under this cruel clipping and
dissecting process; or is it of the nature of a polypus, each piece
alive and growing up to perfection in its own way? Has each of the
planets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as this
earth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately on
the little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the host
of heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, who
burned their children alive, in honor of the sun, on Sun-days?

An aqueous solution of this difficulty of getting rid of Almighty God,
is frequently proposed. It is known that certain chemical solutions,
when mixed together, deposit a sediment, or precipitate, as chemists
call it. And it is supposed that the universe was all once in a state of
solution, in primeval oceans, and that the ming