years more power has been put into that watch than a horse could exert at once.  But suppose [Page 253] one had tried to put all that force into the watch at once:  it would have pulverized it to atoms.  But supposing the universe had been dowered with power at first to run its enormous rounds for twenty millions of years.  It is inconceivable; steel would be as friable as sand, and strengthless as smoke, in such strain.

We have discovered some of the laws of the force we call gravitation.  But what do we know of its essence?  How it appears to act we know a little, what it is we are profoundly ignorant.  Few men ever discuss this question.  All theories are sublimely ridiculous, and fail to pass the most primary tests.  How matter can act where it is not, and on that with which it has no connection, is inconceivable.

Newton said that anyone who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, could not admit for a moment the possibility of a sun reaching through millions of miles, and exercising there an attractive power.  A watch may run if wound up, but how the watch-spring in one pocket can run the watch in another is hard to see.  A watch is a contrivance for distributing a force outside of itself, and if the universe runs at all on that principle, it distributes some force outside of itself.

Le Sage’s theory of gravitation by the infinitive hail of atoms cannot stand a minute, hence we come back as a necessity of thought to Herschel’s statement.  “It is but reasonable to regard gravity as a result of a consciousness and a will existent somewhere.”  Where?  I read an old book speaking of these matters, and it says of God, He hangeth the earth upon nothing; he upholdeth constantly all things by the word of his power. [Page 254] By him all things consist or hold together.  It teaches an imminent mind; an almighty, constantly exerted power.  Proof of this starts up on every side.  There is a recognized tendency in all high-class energy to deteriorate to a lower class.  There is steam in the boiler, but it wastes without fuel.  There is electricity in the jar, but every particle of air steals away a little, unless our conscious force is exerted to regather it.  There is light in the sun, but infinite space waits to receive it, and takes it swift as light can leap.  We said that if the sun were pure coal, it would burn out in five thousand years, but it blazes undimmed by the million.  How can it?  There have been various theories:  chemical combustion, it has failed; meteoric impact, it is insufficient; condensation, it is not proved; and if it were, it is an intermediate step back to the original cause of condensation.  The far-seeing eyes see in the sun the present active power of Him who first said, “Let there be light,” and who at any moment can meet a Saul in the way to Damascus with a light above the brightness of the sun—­another noon arisen on mid-day; and of whom it shall be said in the eternal state of unclouded brightness, where sun and moon are no more, “The glory of the Lord shall lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”