Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/683

Rh on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the earth by a little ball on the top of the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament. The interior planets would revolve round St. Paul's as a centre; Mercury, at the distance of St. Clement's Church in the Strand; Venus, at the distance of St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square; Mars would be at Lambeth Bridge; Jupiter, at Walham Green; Saturn, in the middle of Richmond Park; Uranus, a little nearer the centre than Slough; Neptune, a couple of miles short of Reading. The outermost planet of the solar system, then, would on this scale revolve in an orbit comprising London and its neighborhood as far as Stevenage on the north, Chelmsford and Rochester on the east, and Horsham on the south.

On that same scale the nearest fixed star would be nearly as far away as the moon is in the actual heavens.

This inconceivable remoteness shows that the sun and his satellites lie apart in space. They form one whole, interdependent on each other, but completely removed, as regards their internal economy, from the influence of any attraction outside.

There are reasons for concluding that the system, thus organized and isolated, was brought into existence by one continuous act of creative energy, and that, however long the period over which the process may have been spread, the whole solar system forms part of one creation; and though it has been sometimes thought that the earth was made by itself, and that the sun was introduced from outside space, or created where he is at a different time, the evidence is strong against such a supposition.

In the first place, the orbits of all the planets are nearly in one plane, and describe very nearly concentric circles. If, when they received the original impulse which sent them revolving round the sun, any of them had been started with a little more original velocity, such planets would revolve in orbits more elongated. If, therefore, they had been the result of several distinct acts of creation, instead of being parts of one and the same act of creation, their orbits would probably have been so many ovals, narrow and wide in all degrees, and intersecting and interfering with each other in all directions. Yet if this want of harmony had existed, even to a small degree, it would have been sufficient to destroy the existing species of living creatures, and cause to disappear all security for the stability of the solar system. If the earth's orbit were much more eccentric than it is, all living creatures would die, for the extremes