Embraces a view of the new creation, which is to succeed the destruction of this system, in which I shall contend that a new creation shall be the result, but not a modulation of the former matter which is to be destroyed by fire, but a new creation out of nothing, as it was in the beginning. From the great vault, where flies in open sight, To which no tempter foul, with blasting breath, That there shall be a new creation brought into be-, ing, after the destruction of the heavens and earth, is established by the Scriptures; for it is written, And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. Rev. 21, 5. Here the spirit evidently lays important stress upon the great and sublime work of a new creation, by say ing, These words are true and faithful. Therefore, they shall certainly be accomplished. This very thing was expected by the ancient Jews, as constituting much of the bliss of a future state; for thus they understood their prophet Isaiah to mean, when he says, For behold I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. Isa. 65, 17. Now if the new creation is to be made out of the old one, how, then, can it with any propriety be said by Isaiah, that it shall not come into mind, when the remembrance must necessarily continue, that out of the old system's materials the new creation was made? But respecting the time when this shall be accomplished: The ancient Jews believed that God would bring into being this new creation at the end of seven thousand years. This opinion of theirs, I consider both interesting and singular, and goes to establish the sentiment, that they considered the age of this world limited to seven thousand years, which agrees with the opinions advanced in the Seventh Division. Some who are learned, of our own times, have strangely hesitated upon the subject of this new creation, and have considered it vastly presumptuous to venture a thought definitely upon it, or pretending to say what is meant by it, and in what it shall consist. But in order to pass clear of the charge of presumption, I shall here introduce St. John, as qualifying the nature of its consistency. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. Rev. 21, 1. If the first earth and first heaven are properly so designated, because they consist of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water, then we have a clue whereby to find out of what the new heaven and new earth shall consist. We see that God, in the beginning, called the dry land earth. Gen. 1, 10; and that he called the firmament heaven. Gen. 1, 8. Therefore, these being thus named in the first instance, it is hence perfectly reasonable to believe, that the new heaven and new earth, in the second instance, shall consist of like materials with this-otherwise we understand nothing by the communication by St. John. But undoubtedly the beauty and glory of the new creation will greatly exceed that part of the present system in which we live; for this, by the great deluge, and many other convulsions in nature, has become defaced, and changed from what it was at first. earth is to be destroyed, is, unquestionably because it is polluted; and God, to signify to man his exceeding hatred to sin, has determined to destroy it by fire. A signification something like this, though effected by the agency of a different element, is apparent in the ruin it once sustained by the deluge; for God could as easily have destroyed these antedeluvian nations in any other way as by a general flood. But why the other globes of the system are to be removed, is doubtless to give place to the new creation. Their number, it seems, besides the comets, is 31; but the number of comets, perhaps, is as yet unknown. 450 have been discoveréd, and the elements of 103 have been calculated; but whether the comets properly belong to the solar system, or are a system of themselves, or whether they connect The reason why this systems, is perhaps a question. But if they do not belong to this system, then they were not created at the same time with this; and therefore will not be involved in the consequences of the judgment day. There is good reason to believe, that all the planets, with all their satellites, all comets and systems, together with their respective suns, be their numbers greater or smaller, are inhabited by intelligent beings. It is improbable that either the sun to this, or the suns to other systems, or even the comets, are fire, as has been supposed. "On the nature of the sun there have been various conjectures. It was long thought that he was a vast globe of fire, 1,384,462 times larger than the earth, and that he was continually emitting from his body innumerable inillions of fiery particles, which, being extremely divided, answered the purpose of light and heat, without occasioning any ignition, or burning, except when collected in the focus of a convex lens, or burning glass. Against this opinion, however, many serious and weighty objections have been made; and it has been so pressed with difficulties, that philosophers have been obliged to look for a theory less repugnant to nature and probability. Dr. Herschel's discoveries by means of his immensely magnifying telescopes, have, by the general consent of philosophers, added a new. habitable world to our system, which is the sun. Without stopping to enter into a detail of the proprie ty of the position, it is sufficient to say, that these discoveries tend to prove, that what we call the sun is only the atmosphere of that globe, and that this atmosphere consists of various elastic fluids, that are more or less lucid and transparent; that as the clouds belonging to our earth are probably decompositions of some of the elastic fluids belonging to the atmosphere itself, so we may suppose that in the vast atmosphere of the sun, similar decompositions may take place-but with this difference, that the decomposition of the elastic fluids of the sun are of a phosphoric nature, and are attended by lucid appearances, by giving out light. The real opake body of the sun he considers as hidden generally from us, by means of this luminous atmosphere ; but what are called the maculæ, or spots on the sun, and have frequently been seen with the naked eye, are real openings in this atmosphere, through which the opake body of the sun becomes visible-that this atmosphere itself is not fiery or hot, but is the instrument which God designed to act on the caloric or latent heat, and that heat is only produced by the solar light acting upon and combining with the caloric, or matter of pure virgin fire, contained in the air, and other substances which are heated by it. "Where the stars are in great abundance, Dr. Herschel supposes they form primaries and secondaries, i. e. suns revolving about suns, as planets revolve about the sun in our system. He considers that this must be the case in what is called the milky way—the stars being there in prodigious numbers. Of this he gives the following proof: On August 22, 1792, he found that in 41 minutes of time, not less than 258,000 stars had passed through the field of view in his telescope."Clark on Gen. 1, 16. Oh! what a view is this of the great God, who has created countless systems of matter, and are all the |