would rush to dread and fearful ruin. I will not now attempt to estimate the extent of that ruin,—to determine whether the earth would still move on its course, in cold, dark and lifeless desolation, or whether the elementary particles of which it is composed, being released from all sustaining or combining force, would be dissolved and dissipated through the immensity of space. It is sufficient to see that there would instantly follow an entire destruction of all that now renders the earth a habitation for man. For all practical uses the destruction would be as total as if the earth were annihilated.
And if such would be the inevitable consequence of a influence, the inference necessarily follows, that the earth is perpetually sustained through the medium of the sun. Having been at first created from the sun, it continues, at every moment to be nourished and sustained from the same source; so that its preservation from one moment to another is equivalent to a perpetual withdrawal of the sun's creation.
But it must not be supposed that the sun, from which the earth at first derived its existence, and upon which it continually depends, that even this exists by virtue of any power inherent in itself. Though in its essential principles it is pure elemental fire, yet like all other matter, it is in itself dead and powerless. It exists because it corresponds to a spiritual sun, which is the divine love and wisdom. It is an effect from that spiritual sun. Its heat corresponds to the divine love, which warms, nourishes and supports the spiritual world; while its light corresponds to the divine truth which is the light of heaven.
The creation of the natural sun, and through it, of all things in nature, from the spiritual sun, is very clearly and beautifully explained in the book before referred to—"The Divine Love and wisdom,"—a profoundly philosophical and truly rational work. In this work may be found a spiritual and rational demonstration of that most mysterious of all
