that
they were formed by the explosion of a large planet; that the boiler of
the large locomotive had burst, the fragments had all lighted upon the
track again, in the shape of hand-cars, and the hand-cars had
magnanimously resolved to keep running, and do the business of the line;
and that, as there must have been material enough in the original planet
to make some thousands of them, more would be discovered by watching two
depots, at the crossings of the tracks, in the constellations Virgo and
the Whale, where they must all pass. In fact, he did himself find
another, very near one of these nodes; more recently many others have
been found; and astronomers now expect to hear of one or two more every
year.

At first sight his theory seemed strengthened by every new discovery.
It is true, reflecting men could not help wondering at such a
marvelously regular explosion as would produce beautiful little orderly
planets, going so regularly too, and all by accident. They never heard
of the blowing up of a palace producing cottages, or the explosion of a
steamboat throwing off the hurricane deck in the shape of whaleboats, or
the bursting of a locomotive producing model engines, or even hand-cars.
However, as the theory removed God out of sight, it was generally
accepted and freely used by Infidels, to show that the world had no need
of a Creator.

But astronomers saw, that as each new asteroid had a track of its own,
and ran to a different terminus, and the roads in which they ran were of
different gauges and grades--one little asteroid, Pallas, running up and
down a track inclined thirty-five degrees, just as speedily as the
others--every new discovery increased the difficulty of accounting for
their origin by explosion. But the discovery of the planet Hygeia, at a
vast distance from the others, utterly overturned the explosion theory.
Loomis says:

"The difficulties in the way of our regarding these small planets, as
fragments of a single body, were well nigh-insuperable before the
discovery of Hygeia. This last discovery has probably given the
death-blow to the theory of Olbers. The orbit of Hygeia completely
incloses the orbits of several of the asteroids, its perihelion
distance--that is, its least distance from the sun--exceeding the
aphelion--or greatest distance--of Flora by _twenty-five millions of
miles_. _No change of position of the orbits could, therefore, bring
these orbits to a coincidence._"[197]

The mat