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 has been aptly called, "a universal Fire-Mist."[28] When the theory is limited to the explanation of the origin of the planets and their satellites, the original condition of our solar system is assumed to have been widely different from what it now is; the sun is supposed to have existed for a time alone, to have revolved upon his axis, and to have been surrounded with an atmosphere expanded by intense heat, and extending far beyond the limits of our system as it now exists.

This solar atmosphere revolved, like the sun itself, around its axis; but its heat, constantly radiated into sidereal space, gradually diminished, and the atmosphere being contracted in proportion as it cooled, the rapidity of its rotation was accelerated, until it reached the point at which the central attraction was overcome by the centrifugal force, and then a zone of vapor would be detached or thrown off, which might either retain its form as a nebulous ring, like the ring of Saturn, or first breaking into fragments, from some want of continuity in its structure, and afterwards coalescing into one mass, might be condensed into a planet as the vapor continued to cool.

These rings or planets, thus detached from the central atmospheric mass, would continue to revolve, in virtue of the force originally impressed upon them, and their motion would be nearly circular, in the same plane and in the same direction with that of the sun.