irresistible esteem for what is right, this conviction of a rule of action extending beyond the gratification of our irreflective impulses, as an impress stamped upon the human mind by the Deity himself; a trace of His nature; an indication of His will; an announcement of His purpose; a promise of His favour; and though this faculty may need to be confirmed and "unfolded, instructed and assisted by other aids, it still seems to contain in itself a sufficient intimation that the highest objects of man's existence are to be attained, by means of a direct and intimate reference of his thoughts and actions to the Divine Author of his being.

Such then is the Deity to which the researches of Natural Theology point; and so far is the train of reflections in which we have engaged, from being merely speculative and barren. With the material world we cannot stop. If a superior Intelligence have ordered and adjusted the succession of seasons and the structure of the plants of the field, we must allow far more than this at first sight would seem to imply. We must admit still greater powers, still higher wisdom. for the creation of the beasts of the forest with their faculties; and higher wisdom still and more transcendent attributes, for the creation of man. And when we reach this point, we find that it is not knowledge only, not power only, not foresight and beneficence alone, which we must attribute to the Maker of the World; but that we must consider him as the author, in us, of a reverence for moral purity and rectitude; and, if the author of such emotions in us, how can we conceive of Him otherwise, than that these qualities are parts of

his nature; and that He is not only wise and great, and good, incomparably beyond our highest conceptions, but also conformed in his purposes to the rule which He thus impresses upon us, that is, Holy in the highest degree which we can image to ourselves as possible.

CHAP. II.-On the Vastness of the Universe.

I. THE aspect of the world, even without any of the peculiar lights which science throws upon it, is fitted to give us an idea of the greatness of the power by which it is directed and governed, far exceeding any notions of power and greatness which are suggested by any other contemplation. The number of human beings who surround us-the various conditions requisite for their life, nutrition, well-being, all fulfilled ;— the way in which these conditions are modified, as we pass in thought to other countries, by climate, temperament, habit ;-the vast amount of the human population of the globe thus made up; yet man himself but one among almost endless tribes of animals ;-the forest, the field, the desert, the air, the ocean, all teeming with creatures whose bodily wants are as carefully provided for as his-the sun, the clouds, the winds, all attending, as it were, on these organised beings;-a host of beneficent energies, unwearied by time and succession, pervading every corner of the earth;-this spectacle cannot but give the contemplator a lofty and magnificent conception of the Author of so vast a work, of the Ruler of so wide and rich an empire, of the Provider for so many and varied wants, the Director

and Adjuster of such complex and jarring inte

rests.

But when we take a more exact view of this spectacle, and aid our vision by the discoveries which have been made of the structure and extent of the universe, the impression is incalculably increased.

The number and variety of animals, the exquisite skill displayed in their structure, the comprehensive and profound relations by which they are connected, far exceed any thing which we could have beforehand imagined. But the view of the universe expands also on another side. The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are, circling about our own sun, six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature: besides our moon and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture, that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren;-that they are, like ours, occupied with organisation, life, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do, yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the domain of nature is enlarged and elevated. The outermost of the planetary globes of which we have spoken is so far from the sun, that the central luminary must appear to the inhabitants of that planet, if any there are, no larger than Venus does to us; and the length of their year will be eighty-two of ours.

But astronomy carries us still onwards. It teaches us that, with the exception of the planets already mentioned, the stars which we see have no immediate

relation to our system. The obvious supposition is that they are of the nature and order of our sun: the minuteness of their apparent magnitude agrees, on this supposition, with the enormous and almost inconceivable distance which, from all the measurements of astronomers, we are led to attribute to them. If then, these are suns, they may, like our sun, have planets revolving round them; and these may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable and animal and rational life: -we may thus have in the universe worlds, no one knows how many, no one can guess how varied;—but however many, however varied, they are still but so many provinces in the same empire, subject to common rules, governed by a common power.

But the stars which we see with the naked eye are but a very small portion of those which the telescope unveils to us. The most imperfect telescope will discover some that are invisible without it; the very best instrument perhaps does not show us the most remote. The number of stars which crowd some parts of the heavens is truly marvellous: Dr. Herschel calculated that a portion of the milky way, about 10 degrees long and 2 broad, contained 258,000. In a sky so occupied the moon would eclipse 2000 of such stars at once.

We learn too from the telescope that even in this province the variety of nature is not exhausted. Not only do the stars differ in colour and appearance, but some of them grow periodically fainter and brighter, as if they were dark on one side, and revolved on their axes. In other cases two stars appear close to each

other, and in some of these cases it has been clearly established, that the two have a motion of revolution about each other; thus exhibiting an arrangement new to the astronomer, and giving rise, possibly, to new conditions of worlds. In other instances, again, the telescope shows, not luminous points, but extended masses of dilute light, like bright clouds, hence called nebula. Some have supposed (as we have noticed in the last book) that such nebulæ by further condensation might become suns; but for such opinions we have nothing but conjecture. Some stars again have undergone permanent changes; or have absolutely disappeared, as the celebrated star of 1572, in the constellation Cassiopeia.

If we take the whole range of created objects in our own system, from the sun down to the smallest animalcule, and suppose such a system, or something in some way analogous to it, to be repeated for each of the millions of stars which the telescope reveals to us, we obtain a representation of the material universe; at least a representation which to many persons appears the most probable one. And if we contemplate this aggregate of systems as the work of a Creator, which in our own system we have found ourselves so irresistibly led to do, we obtain a sort of estimate of the extent through which his creative energy may be traced, by taking the widest view of the universe which our faculties have attained.

If we consider further the endless and admirable contrivances and adaptations which philosophers and observers have discovered in every portion of our own