While all the phenomena in the heavens indicate a law of progressive
creation, in which revolving matter is distributed into suns and
planets, there are indications in our own system that a period has been
assigned for its duration, which, sooner or later, it must reach. The
medium which fills universal space, whether it be a luminiferous ether,
or arise from the indefinite expansion of planetary atmospheres, must
retard the bodies which move in it, even were it 360,000 millions of
times more rare than atmospheric air; and, with its time of revolution
gradually shortening, the satellite must return to its planet, the
planet to its sun, and the sun to its primeval nebula. The fate of our
system, thus deduced from mechanical laws, must be the fate of all
others. Motion cannot be perpetuated in a resisting medium; and where
there exist disturbing forces, there must be primarily derangement,
and ultimately ruin. From the great central mass, heat may again be
summoned to exhale nebulous matter; chemical forces may again produce
motion, and motion may again generate systems; but, as in the recurring
catastrophes which have desolated our earth, the great First Cause must
preside at the dawn of each cosmical cycle; and, as in the animal races
which were successively reproduced, new celestial creations of a nobler
form of beauty and of a higher form of permanence may yet appear in
the sidereal universe. “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth,
and the former shall not be remembered.” “The new heavens and the
new earth shall remain before me.” “Let us look, then, according to
this promise, for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness.”--_North-British Review_, No. 3.