ence of God, He has been pleased to act on the
principle of _gradual and progressive_, as contradistinguished from that
of _instant and perfect_ production; and they may seem, at first sight,
to afford some natural analogies in favor of the radical idea on which
the various modern Theories _of_ Development are based. In such
circumstances it would be an unwise and dangerous course either to
overlook the palpable facts which Nature and Revelation equally attest,
or to deny that they may afford signal manifestations of the manifold
wisdom of God. Nor is it necessary for any enlightened advocate of
Theism to betake himself to these expedients; he may freely admit the
existence of _such_ cases of gradual development, he may even appeal to
them as illustrative of the order of Nature, and the design which that
order displays; and the only question which he is at all concerned to
discuss amounts in substance to this: Whether the method of production
which is pursued in the _ordinary course_ of Nature can account for the
_original commencement_ of the present system of things?

But the state of the question, and the right application of the
argument, may be best illustrated by considering each of the _four_
forms of the theory separately and in succession.

SECTION I.

THEORY OF _COSMICAL_ DEVELOPMENT, OR OF THE PRODUCTION OF WORLDS AND
PLANETARY SYSTEMS BY NATURAL LAW.--"THE VESTIGES."

The doctrine of a Nebular Cosmogony was first suggested by some
observations of the elder Herschell on those cloud-like appearances
which may be discerned in various parts of the heavens by the aid of the
telescope, or even, in some cases, by the naked eye. It assumed a more
definite form in the hands of La Place, although even by him it was
offered, not as an ascertained discovery of science, but simply as a
hypothetical explanation of the way in which the production of the
planets and their satellites _might_ possibly be accounted for _by_ the
operation of the known laws of Nature.

The explanation of the whole theory may be best understood by dividing
it into two parts: the _first_ being that which attempts to account for
the formation of planets and satellites, _on the assumption of the
existence of a central sun_, and _of certain other specified
conditions_; the _second_ being that which undertakes to account for the
formation of the sun itself, on the assumption of the existence of _a
diffused nebulous matter_ in space, or, as it h