Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads
An instant’s pause, and lives but while she moves.
Its own revolvency upholds the world.”
In one sense of the word, philosophy knows, and atheism says, that matter is in perpetual motion. But the motion here meant refers to the state of matter, and that only on the surface of the earth. It is either decomposition, which is continually destroying the form of the bodies of matter, or recomposition, which renews that matter in the same or another form, as the decomposition of animal or vegetable substances enter into the composition of other bodies. But the motion that upholds the solar system is of an entirely different kind, and is not a property of matter. It operates also to an entirely different effect. It operates also to perpetual preservation, and to prevent any change in the state of the system.
Giving then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows it has, or all that atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even supposing matter to be eternal, it will not account for the system of the universe, or of the solar system, because it will not account for motion, and it is motion that preserves it. When, therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense importance, that without it the universe could not exist, and for which neither matter, nor any, nor all, the properties of matter can account, we are by necessity forced into the rational and comfortable belief of the existence of a cause superior to matter, and that cause is God.
The motion of the earth, therefore, is an effect of Divine power, because there is none other equal to it; and the constant operation of the same cause is requisite to perpetuate its progress. How amazing it is that this globe, so large in circumference, should move at all! Plato attributes motion to the power of God, “How is it possible,” he argues, “for so prodigious a mass to be carried round for so long a time, by any natural cause? For which reason,” he says, “I assert God to be the cause, and that it is impossible it should be otherwise.”[50] “Every thing that is moved,” adds Aristotle, “must of necessity be moved by some other thing; and that thing must be moved, either by another, or not by another thing. If it be moved by that which is moved by another, we must of necessity come to some Prime Mover that is not moved by another. For it is impossible that what moves, and is moved by another, shall proceed ad infinitum.”[51] Since motion then is not a property of matter, but an effect produced by the power of a Divine agent, what a constant display we have of this efficient energy, in moving this earth, and with such a surprising, swiftness! Surely all men should fear and reverence a Being, who possesses and exercises such a power! He who created all things out of nothing, could, if he pleased, extinguish the light, and shake the solid earth into atoms!
When the ponderous wheel of nature first began to move, time, consisting of days, months, years, and ages, and measured by the duration and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, commenced.
Time (in eternity parenthesis)
Is measur’d by successive days and months,
Seasons and years; which closely like the links