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.

CHAP. III.-On 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 recognise 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 organised 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. It seems as if a single individual

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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 superintendence 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.

I. We may, in the first place, repeat the observation made in the last chapter, on the confusion which 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 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. Large numbers have no peculiar attributes which distinguish them from small ones; and when we disregard the common limits

of our own faculties, which, though important to us, can have no application to the Divine nature, it is quite as allowable to suppose a million millions of earths, as one, to be under the moral government of God.

II. 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 apparently dead masses and blank spaces of the world were found to swarm with life. And yet, of the animals thus revealed, all, though unknown to us before, had never been forgotten by Providence. Their structure, their vessels and limbs, their adaptation to their situation, their food and habitations, were regulated in as beautiful and complete a manner as those of the largest and apparently most favoured animals. The smallest

insects are as exactly finished, often as gaily ornamented, as the most graceful beast or the birds of brightest plumage. And when we seem to go out of the domain of the complex animal structure with which we are familiar, and come to animals of apparently more scanty faculties, and less developed powers of enjoyment and action, we still find that their faculties and their senses are in exact harmony with their situation and circumstances; that the wants which they have are provided for, and the powers which they possess called into activity. So that Müller, the patient and accurate observer of the smallest and most obscure microscopical animalcula, declares that all classes alike, those which have manifest organs, and those which have not, offer a vast quantity of new and striking views of the animal economy; every step of our discoveries leading us to admire the design and care of the Creator.* We find, therefore, that the Divine Providence is, in fact, capable of extending itself adequately to an immense succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we can image or could previously have anticipated; and thus we may feel secure, so far as analogy can secure us, that the mere multitude of created objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of the Creator.

III. We may observe further, that, vast as are the parts and proportions of the universe, we still appear to be able to perceive that it is finite; the subordination of magnitudes and numbers and classes appears to have

* Müller, Infusoria, Preface.