So they felt quite safe in affirming that there was the genuine, simple, homogeneous gas, in the nebulae, with which Almighty God had nothing whatever to do, but which had first made itself and then had condensed into our present world.

But unfortunately for this brilliant discovery the spectroscope opened windows into the nebulae, and showed very plainly that they were on fire; and fire is a compound; it can not burn without fuel and something to support the combustion; so that settled the alleged simplicity of the nebulae.

It is now demonstrated, therefore, that every known substance existing in nature is a compound, and therefore can not be eternal.

And the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.

No number of finite existences can be eternal.