Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/321

Rh and was disposed to find design only when such use could be detected; and, hence, if no use in this sense could be proved for the stability of the celestial mechanism, this part of God's works could not be appealed to as proving a Designing Mind. But it looks like presumption to restrict the display of Divine Intelligence to the sphere of life. Though man had never been created, and though no living thing existed on any planet, would not the lieavens still declare the glory of God? Would not the mechanism, by which the stability of the system is secured, still manifest calculation and design? The material creation is but the projection of the Divine ideas in space and time, and it would bear the impress of the Divine Intelligence, though no finite spirit or living thing were called into being. No doubt the most marvellous display of the Divine wisdom lies in the correlation of matter to life and created intelligence. Still, while admitting the higher, we are not called to ignore the lower sphere.

We have seen that intelligence may be discovered in the adaptation of means to secure the end of stability, though we may not be able to assign any use to the stability, at least in the ordinary sense of the term. But may there not be uses other than the physical welfare of living things? Is there not a use in the very order and harmony of the solar system, apart from the more direct utilitarian purposes? Is there not an adaptation in this order and harmony to the