and planets round. The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of
Saturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a
string and make the string wind up round our fingers, the ball always
flies quicker and quicker as the string is shortened. Two eddies in
a stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution at the
distance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which makes a
pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions of
miles. There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in this
indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minuteness
of the field of their operation. Their being uniform, too,
throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so
unfailing in their tendency to operate, so that only the proper
conditions are presented, afford to our minds matter for the gravest
consideration. Nor should it escape our careful notice that the
regulations on which all the laws of matter operate, are established
on a rigidly accurate mathematical basis. Proportions of numbers and
geometrical figures rest at the bottom of the whole. All these
considerations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for them, tend
to raise our ideas with respect to the character of physical laws,
even though we do not go a single step further in the investigation.
But it is impossible for an intelligent mind to stop there. We
advance from law to the cause of law, and ask, What is that? Whence
have come all these beautiful regulations? Here science leaves us,
but only to conclude, from other grounds, that there is a First Cause
to which all others are secondary and ministrative, a primitive
almighty will, of which these laws are merely the mandates. That
great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his
history! Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a subject so
much above his finite faculties, and only can wonder and adore!