moons and three rings not made into moons, is left in the
third sun-ring; and so on down to Vulcan.

The outer planets would cool off first, become inhabitable, and,
as the sun contracted and they radiated their own heat, become
refrigerated and left behind by the retreating sun. Of course the
outer planets would move slowly; but as that portion of the sun
which gave them their motion drew in toward the centre, keeping
its absolute speed, and revolving in the lessening circles of a
contracting body, it would give the faster motion necessary to
be imparted to Earth, Mercury, and Vulcan.

The four great classes of facts confirmatory of this hypothesis
are as follows: 1st. All the planets move [Page 184] in the same
direction, and nearly in the same plane, as if thrown off from one
equator; 2d. The motions of the satellites about their primaries are
mostly in the same direction as that of their primaries about the
sun; 3d. The rotation of most of these bodies on their axes, and
also of the sun, is in the same direction as the motion of the
planets about the sun; 4th. The orbits of the planets, excluding
asteroids, and their satellites, have but a comparatively small
eccentricity; 5th. Certain nebulae are observable in the heavens
which are not yet condensed into solids, but are still bright gas.

The materialistic evolutionist takes up the idea of a universe of
material world-stuff without form, and void, but so endowed as to
develop itself into orderly worlds, and adds to it this exceeding
advance, that when soil, sun, and chemical laws found themselves
properly related, a force in matter, latent for a million eons in
the original cloud, comes forward, and dead matter becomes alive
in the lowest order of vegetable life; there takes place, as Herbert
Spencer says, "a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity,
into a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous
differentiation and integration." The dead becomes alive; matter
passes from unconsciousness to consciousness; passes up from plant
to animal, from animal to man; takes on power to think, reason,
love, and adore. The theistic evolutionist may think that the same
process is gone through, but that an ever-present and working God
superintends, guides, and occasionally bestows a new endowment
of power that successively gives life, consciousness, mental,
affectional, and spiritual capacity.

Is this world-theory true? and if so, is either of the [Page