be nearer to such a one-foot earth, than the moon now is to us.

On such a terrestrial globe the highest mountains would be about an eightieth of an inch high, and consequently only just distinguishable. We may imagine therefore how imperceptible would be the largest animals. The whole organized covering of such a globe would be quite undiscoverable by the eye, except perhaps by colour, like the bloom on a plum.

In order to restore this earth and its inhabitants to their true dimensions, we must magnify them forty millions of times; and to preserve the proportions, we must increase equally the distances of the sun and of the stars from us. They seem thus to pass off into infinity; yet each of them thus removed, has its system of mechanical and perhaps of organic processes going on upon its surface.

But the arrangements of organic life which we can see with the naked eye are few, compared with those which the microscope detects. We know that we may magnify objects thousands of times, and still discover fresh complexities of structure: if we suppose, therefore, that we increase every particle of matter in our universe in such a proportion, in length, breadth, and thickness, we may conceive that we tend thus to bring before our apprehension a true estimate of the quantity of organized adaptations which are ready to testify the extent of the Creator's power.

3. The other numerical quantities which we have to consider in the phenomena of the universe are on as gigantic a scale as the distances and sizes. By the rotation of the earth on its axis, the parts of the equator move at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and the portions of the earth's surface which are in our latitude, at about six hundred. The former velocity is nearly that with which a cannon ball is discharged from the mouth of a gun; but, large as it is, it is inconsiderable compared with the velocity of the earth in its orbit about the sun. This latter velocity is sixty-five times the former. By the rotatory motion of the earth, a point of its surface is carried sometimes forwards and sometimes backwards with regard to the annual progression; but in consequence of the great predominance of the latter velocity in amount, the former scarcely affects it either way. And even the latter velocity is inconsiderable compared with that

of light; which comparison, however, we shall not make; since, according to the theory we have considered as most probable, the motion of light is not a transfer of matter but of motion from one part of space to another.

The extent of the scale of density of different substances has already been mentioned; gold is twenty times as heavy as water; air is eight hundred and thirty times lighter, steam eight thousand times lighter than water; the luminiferous ether is incomparably rarer than steam: and this is true of the matter of light, whether we adopt the undulatory theory or any other.

4. The above statements are vast in amount, and almost oppressive to our faculties. They belong to the measurement of the powers which are exerted in the universe, and of the spaces through which their efficacy reaches (for the most distant bodies are probably connected both by gravity and light.) But these estimates cannot be said so much to give us any notion of the powers of the Deity, as to correct the errors we should fall into by supposing his powers at all to resemble ours :-by supposing that numbers, and spaces, and forces, and combinations, which would overwhelm us, are any obstacle to the arrangements which his plan requires. We can easily understand that to an intelligence surpassing ours in degree only, that may be easy which is impossible to us. The child who cannot count beyond four, the savage who has no name for any number above five, cannot comprehend the possibility of dealing with thousands and millions: yet a little additional developement of the intellect makes such numbers manageable and conceivable. The difficulty which appears to reside in numbers and magnitudes and stages of subordination, is one produced by judging from ourselves-by measuring with our own sounding line; when that reaches no bottom, the ocean appears unfathomable. Yet in fact, how is a hundred millions of miles a great distance? how is a hundred millions of times a great ratio? Not in itself: this greatness is no quality of the numbers which can be proved Tike their mathematical properties; on the contrary, all that absolutely belongs to number, space, and ratio, must, we know demonstrably, be equally true of the largest and the smallest. It is clear that the greatness of these expressions

measure has reference to our faculties only. Our asto

nishment and embarrassment take for granted the limits of our own nature. We have a tendency to treat a difference of degree and of addition, as if it were a difference of kind and of transformation. The existence of the attributes, design, power, goodness, is a matter depending on obvious grounds: about these qualities there can be no mistake: if we can know any thing, we can know these attributes when we see them. But the extent, the limits of such attributes must be determined by their effects; our knowledge of their limits by what we see of the effects. Nor is any extent any amount of power and goodness improbable beforehand. we know that these must be great, we cannot tell how great. We should not expect beforehand to find them bounded; and therefore when the boundless prospect opens before us, we may be bewildered, but we have no reason to be shaken in our conviction of the reality of the cause from which their effects proceed: we may feel ourselves incapable of following the train of thought, and may stop, but we have no rational motive for quitting the point which we have thus attained in tracing the Divine Perfections.

On the contrary, those magnitudes and proportions which leave our powers of conception far behind;-that ever-expanding view which is brought before us, of the scale and mechanism, the riches and magnificence, the population. and activity of the universe;-may reasonably serve, not to disturb, but to enlarge and elevate our conceptions of the Maker and Master of all; to feed an ever-growing admiration of His wonderful nature; and to excite a desire to be able to contemplate more steadily and conceive less inadequately the scheme of his government and the operation of his power.

CHAPTER III.

Man's Place in the Universe.

THE mere aspect of the starry heavens, without taking into account the view of them to which science introduces us, tends strongly to force upon man the impression of

his own insignificance. The vault of the sky arched at a vast and unknown distance over our heads; the stars, apparently infinite in number, each keeping its appointed place and course, and seeming to belong to a wide system of things which has no relation to the earth; while man is but one among many millions of the earth's inhabitants ;-all this makes the contemplative spectator feel how exceedingly small a portion of the universe he is; how little he must be, in the eyes of an intelligence which can embrace the whole. Every person, in every age and country, will recognize as irresistibly natural the train of thought expressed by the Hebrew psalmist: "when I consider the heavens the work of thy hands-the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained-Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?"

If this be the feeling of the untaught person, when he contemplates the aspect of the skies, such as they offer themselves to a casual and unassisted glance, the impression must needs be incalculably augmented, when we look at the universe with the aid of astronomical discovery and theory. We then find, that a few of the shining points which we see scattered on the face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth, and may perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be like the earth, the habitations of organized beings;—that the rest of "the host of heaven' may, by a like analogy, be conjectured to be the centres of similar systems of revolving worlds;-that the vision of man has gone travelling onwards, to an extent never anticipated, through this multitude of systems, and that while myriads of new centres start up at every advance, he appears as yet not to have received any intimation of a limit. Every person probably feels, at first, lost, confounded, overwhelmed, with the vastness of this spectacle; and seems to himself, as it were, annihilated by the magnitude and multitude of the objects which thus compose the universe. The distance between him and the Creator of the world appears to be increased beyond measure by this disclosure. seems as if a single individual could have no chance and no claim for the regard of the Ruler of the whole.

The mode in which the belief of God's government of the physical world is important and interesting to man, is, as has already been said, through the connexion which this

belief has with the conviction of God's government of the moral world; this latter government being, from its nature, one which has a personal relation to each individual, his actions and thoughts. It will, therefore, illustrate our subject to show that this impression of the difficulty of a personal superintendance and government, exercised by the Maker of the world over each of his rational and free creatures, is founded upon illusory views: and that on an attentive and philosophical examination of the subject, such a government is in accordance with all that we can discover of the scheme and the scale of the universe.

1. We may, in the first place, repeat the observations made in the last chapter, on the confusion that sometimes arises in our minds, and makes us consider the number of the objects of the Divine care as a difficulty in the way of its exercise. If we can conceive this care employed on a million of persons, on the population of a kingdom, of a city, of a street, there is no real difficulty in supposing it extended to every planet in the solar system, admitting each to be peopled as ours is; nor to every part of the universe, supposing each star the centre of such a system. Numbers are nothing in themselves: and when we reject the known, but unessential limits of our own faculties, it is quite as allowable to suppose a million millions of earths, as one, to be under the moral government of God.

2. In the next place we may remark, not only that no reason can be assigned why the Divine care should not extend to a much greater number of individuals than we at first imagine, but that in fact we know that it does so extend. It has been well observed, that about the same time when the invention of the telescope showed us that there might be myriads of other worlds claiming the Creator's care; the invention of the microscope proved to us that there were in our own world myriads of creatures, before unknown, which this care was preserving. While one discovery seemed to remove the Divine Providence further from us, the other gave us most striking examples that it was far more active in our neighbourhood than we had supposed; while the first extended the boundaries of God's known kingdom, the second made its known administration more minute and careful. It appeared that in the leaf and in the bud, in solids and in fluids, animals existed hitherto unsuspected; the ap