earth, and thus the two motions would not correspond. But if we allow for the attraction of the earth upon a liquid or semi-liquid body, producing for the moon an elongated shape, her axial rotation would, if the two motions were in the beginning very near together, vary with her revolutions around the earth, and the correspondence between the two motions would be kept up. Here, then, you have a physical explanation of the phenomenon which strikes you as so remarkable--a result brought about by natural causes, without the supposition of what you call intentional design, or formative skill directly exercised by a supernatural interposition. SOPHEREUS. This is a very plausible theory, but it all depends upon two assumptions: First, it assumes it to be extremely improbable that the two motions were aboriginally made to correspond, by an intentional adjustment of the moon's weight, dimensions, and shape, upon such a plan that the laws of gravitation and movement would keep the two motions in exact correspondence. Why should not the rates of movement have been originally designed and put in execution as we find them? You anticipate the answer to this question by another assumption, namely, that the substance of the moon was at first in a fluid or semi-fluid state, so that she owed her present shape to the effect of the earth's attraction, and the centrifugal tendency of its most distant part to be thrown out of the line of its motion. I should be glad to have you explain why it is extremely improbable that the Creator planned this part of the solar system, the earth and its satellite, and so adjusted the dimensions, shapes, and weights of each of them, and fixed the rates of revolution of the satellite, that the laws of attraction and motion would find a mechanism which they would keep perpetually in operation, and thus preserve a constant relation between the moon's axial rotation and her revolution around the earth. I have thus far learned to regard the probable methods of the Creator somewhat differently from those which you scientists ascribe to him. Most of you, I observe, have a strong tendency to regard the Deity as having no specific plan in the production of anything, which plan he directly executed; and, so far as you regard a First Cause as the producing cause of phenomena, you limit its activity to the establishment of certain fixed laws, and explain all phenomena upon the hypothesis that the Supreme Being--if you admit one--made no special interpositions of his will and power in any direction, after he had established his system of general laws. But to me it seems that the weight of probability is entirely against your hypothesis. In this particular case of which we have been speaking, that of the moon's revolution, the supposed improbability of an original and intentional adjustment of the two motions turns altogether on the argument that if they had been so adjusted at the beginning they would not have kept