Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/219

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OF THE PLANETS.
191

had many architects employed upon it, but there is, in every part, evidence of one presiding mind. The successors of the original designer have only striven to carry out his ideas. There is one pervading style in the architecture of the heavens, and though subordinate agencies have been employed to carry it out, they do not in the least prevent us from recognising the hand of the Original Designer. The materialist may say that the concentric structure, as well as all the beauty and harmony of the system, can be explained by certain great material laws. But, granting that these laws do exhibit the modus operandi do they, in the least, supersede the necessity of a planning and presiding mind? The style of the solar system is an embodied idea; and an idea is a thing of mind, not of matter. We do not get rid of the necessity of genius by shewing how the artist handles his brush, and lays on his paint. The paints and the brush are only the material vehicles by which the ideas of genius are transferred to the canvas. No more do the laws of matter supersede mind. They are only the media through which the ideas of the Divine Mind are transferred to the gallery of the universe. The simpler the means of the artist, the more marvellous are his achievements, and the simplicity and generality of the laws of matter, only enhance the marvels of the divine idea imprinted on the heavens. And what, after all, are the laws of matter but the mode in which the Divine Artist works? The