pur

I do not think, that, amid the distraction and the engrossment of his other suits, he has at all times succeeded in his interpretation of the book; else he would never, in my apprehension, have abetted the leading doctrine of a sect, or a system, which has now nearly dwindled away from public observation.

In my third Discourse I am silent as to the assertion and attempt to combat the inference that is founded on it. I insist, that upon all the analogies of nature and of providence, we can lay no limit on the condescension of God, or on the multiplicity of his regards even to the very humblest departments of creation; and that it is not for us, who see the evidences of divine wisdom and care spread in such exhaustless profusion around, to say, that the Deity would not lavish all the wealth of his wondrous attributes on the salvation even of our solitary species.

At this point of the argument I trust that the intelligent reader may be enabled to perceive in the adversaries of the gospel, a twofold dereliction from the maxims of the Baconian philosophy; that, in the first instance, the assertion which forms the groundwork of their argument, is gratuitously fetched out of an unknown region. where they are utterly abandoned by the light of experience; and that, in the second instance, the inference they urge from it, is in the face of manifold and undeniable truths, all lying within the safe and accessible field of human observation. In my subsequent Discourses, I proceed to the informations of the record. The infidel objection, drawn from astronomy, may be considered as by this time disposed of; and if we have succeeded in clearing it away, so as to deliver the Christian testimony from all discredit upon this ground, then may we submit, on the strength of other evidences, to be guided by its information. We shall thus learn, that Christianity has a far more extensive bearing on the other orders of creation than the infidel is disposed to allow; and whether he will own the authority of this information or not, he will at least be forced to admit, that the subject matter of the Bible itself is not chargeable with that objection which he has attempted to fasten upon it.

Thus, had my only object been the refutation of the Infidel argument, I might have spared the last Discourses of the Volume altogether. But the tracts of Scriptural information to which they directed me, I considered as worthy of prosecution on their own account-and I do think, that much may be gathered from these less observed portions of the field of revelation, to cheer, and to elevate, and to guide the believer.

But, in the management of such a discussion as this, though for a great degree of this effect it would require to be conducted in a far higher style than I am able to sustain, the taste of the human mind may be regaled, and its understanding put into a state of the most agreeable exercise. Now, this is quite distinct from the conscience being made to feel the force of a personal application; nor could I either bring this argument to its close in the pulpit, or offer it to the general notice of the world, without adverting, in the last Discourse, to a delusion which, I fear, is carrying forward thousands, and tens of thousands to an undone eternity. I have closed the volume with an Appendix of Scriptural authorities. I found that I could not easily interweave them in the texture of the Work, and have, therefore, thought fit to present them in a separate form. I look for a twofold benefit from this exhibition-first, on those more general readers, who are ignorant of the Scriptures, and of the riches and variety which abound in them— and, secondly, on those narrow and intolerant professors, who take an alarm at the very sound and semblance of philosophy, and feel as if there was an utter irreconcileable antipathy between its lessons on the one hand, and the soundness and piety of the Bible on the other. It were well, I conceive, for our cause, that the latter could become a little more indulgent on this subject; that they gave up a portion of those ancient and hereditary prepossessions, which go so far to cramp and to enthral them; that they would suffer theology to take that wide range of argument and of illustration which belongs to her; and that less, sensitively jealous of any desecration being brought upon the Sabbath, or the pulpit, they would suffer her freely to announce all those truths, which either serve to protect Christianity from the contempt of science, or to protect the teachers of Chris

tianity from those invasions which are practised both on the sacredness of the office, and on the solitudes of its devotional and intellectual labours.

I shall only add, for the information of readers at a distance, that these Discourses were chiefly delivered on the occasion of the week-day sermon that is preached in rotation by the Ministers of Glasgow.

DISCOURSE I.

A Sketch of the Modern Astronomy.

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him."

Psalm viii. 3, 4,

prejudices which kept back so many human beings from the participation of the Gospel. And should Paul have had reason to rejoice, that, by the success of his arguments, he had reconciled one or any number of Jews to Christianity, then it was the part of these Gentiles, though receiving no direct or personal benefit from the arguments, to have blessed God, and rejoiced along with him.

In the reasonings of the Apostle Paul, we cannot fail to observe how studiously he accommodates his arguments to the pursuits, or principles, or prejudices of the people whom he was addressing. He often made a favourite opinion of their own the starting point of his explanation; and educing a dexterous but irresistible train of argument from some principle upon which each of the parties had a common understanding, did he force them out of all their opposition, by a weapon of their own choosing-nor did he scruple to avail himself of a Jewish peculiarity, or a heathen super-acceptance of the various classes of society. stition, or a quotation from Greek poetry, by which he might gain the attention of those whom he labored to convince, and by the skilful application of which he might "shut them up unto the faith."

Conceive that Paul were at this moment alive, and zealously engaged in the work of pressing the Christian religion on the

Should he not still have acted on the principle of being all things to all men? Should he not have accommodated his discussion to the prevailing taste, and literature, and philosophy of the times? Should he not have closed with the people, whom he was addressing, on some favourite principle of their own; and, in the prosecution of this principle, might he not have got completely beyond the comprehension of a numerous class of zealous, humble, and devoted Christians? Now, the question is not, how these would conduct themselves in such circumstances? but how should they do it? Would it be right in them to sit with impatience, because the argument of the apostles contained in it nothing in the way of comfort or edification to themselves? Should not the benevolence of the Gospel give a different direction to their feelings? And, instead

Now, when Paul was thus addressing one class of an assembly or congregation, another class might, for the time, have been shut out of all direct benefit and application from his arguments. When he wrote an Epistle to a mixed assembly of Christianised Jews and Gentiles, he had often to direct such a process of argument to the former, as the latter would neither require nor comprehend. Now, what should have been the conduct of the Gentiles at the reading of that part of the Epistle which bore almost an exclusive reference to the Jews? Should it be impatience at the hearing of something for which they had no relish or understanding? Should it be a fretful dis-of that narrow, exclusive, and monopolizappointment, because every thing that was ing spirit, which I fear is too characteristic said, was not said for their edification? of the more declared professors of the truth Should it be angry discontent with the as it is in Jesus, ought they not to be paApostle, because, leaving them in the dark, tient, and to rejoice; when to philosophers, he had brought forward nothing for them, and to men of literary accomplishment, through the whole extent of so many suc- and to those who have the direction of the cessive chapters? Some of them may have public taste among the upper walks of sofelt in this way; but surely it would have ciety, such arguments are addressed as may been vastly more Christian to have sat with bring home to their acceptance also, "the meek and unfeigned patience, and to have words of this life?" It is under the imrejoiced that the great Apostle had under-pulse of these considerations, that I have, taken the management of those obstinate with some hesitation, prevailed upon my

self to attempt an argument which I think of the firmament. And there is much in fitted to soften and subdue those prejudices the scenery of a nocturnal sky, to lift the which lie at the bottom of what may be soul to pious contemplation. That moon, called the infidelity of natural science; if and these stars, what are they? They are possible to bring over to the humility of the detached from the world, and they lift you Gospel, those who expatiate with delight above it. You feel withdrawn from the on the wonders and sublimities of creation; earth, and rise in lofty abstraction above and to convince them that a loftier wisdom this little theatre of human passions and still than that even of their high and hon-human anxieties. The mind abandons itourable acquirements, is the wisdom of himself to reverie, and is transferred, in the ecwho is resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract a sentiment of piety from the works and the appearances of nature. It has the authority of the Sacred Writers upon its side, and even our Saviour himself gives it the weight and the solemnity of his example. "Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet your heavenly Father careth for them." He expatiates on the beauty of a single flower, and draws from it the delightful argument of confidence in God. He gives us to see that taste may be combined with piety, and that the same heart may be occupied with all that is serious in the contemplations of religion, and be at the same time alive to the charms and the loveliness of nature. The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He leaves the world, and lifts his imagination to that mighty expanse which spreads above it and around it. He wings his way through space, and wanders in thought over its immeasurable regions. Instead of a dark and unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded with splendour, and filled with the energy of the Divine presence. Creation rises in its immensity before him, and the world, with all which it inherits, shrinks into littleness at a contemplation so vast and so overpowering. He wonders that he is not overlooked amid the grandeur and the variety which are on every side of him, and passing upward from the majesty of nature to the majesty of nature's Architect, he exclaims, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou shouldest deign to visit him?"

stacy of its thoughts, to distant and unexplored regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of her great elements, and it sees the God of nature invested with the high attributes of wisdom and majesty.

But what can these lights be? The curiosity of the human mind is insatiable, and the mechanism of these wonderful heavens has, in all ages, been its subject and its employment. It has been reserved for these latter times, to resolve this great and interesting question. The sublimest powers of philosophy have been called to the exercise, and astronomy may now be looked upon as the most certain and best established of the sciences.

We all know that every visible object appears less in magnitude as it recedes from the eye. The lofty vessel as it retires from the coast, shrinks into littleness, and at last appears in the form of a small speck on the verge of the horizon. The eagle with its expanded wings, is a noble object; but when it takes its flight into the upper regions of the air, it becomes less to the eye, and is seen like a dark spot upon the vault of heaven. The same is true of all magnitude. The heavenly bodies appear small to the eye of an inhabitant of this earth, only from the immensity of their distance. When we talk of hundreds of millions of miles, it is not to be listened to as incredible. For remember that we are talking of those bodies which are scattered over the immensity of space, and that space knows no termination. The conception is great and difficult, but the truth is unquestionable. By a process of measurement which it is unnecessary at present to exIt is not for us to say, whether inspira- plain, we have ascertained first the distance, tion revealed to the Psalmist the wonders and then the magnitude of some of those of the modern astronomy. But even though bodies which roll in the firmament; that The mind be a perfect stranger to the sci- the sun, which presents itself to the eye ence of these enlightened times, the heavens under so diminutive a form, is really a globe, present a great and an elevating spectacle; exceeding, by many thousands of times, the an immense concave reposing upon the dimensions of the earth which we inhabit; circular boundary of the world, and the in- that the moon itself has the magnitude of numerable lights which are suspended from a world; and that even a few of those stars, on high, moving with solemn regularity which appear like so many lucid points to along its surface. It seems to have been at the unassisted eye of the observer, expand night that the piety of the Psalmist was into large circles upon the application of awakened by this contemplation, when the the telescope, and are some of them much moon and the stars were visible, and not larger than the ball which we tread upon, when the sun had risen in his strength, and to which we proudly apply the denomand thrown a splendour around him, which ination of the universe. bore down and eclipsed all the lesser glories

Now, what is the fair and obvious pre

sumption? The world in which we live, as to us, has God divided the light from the is a round ball of a determined magnitude, darkness, and he has called the light day, and and occupies its own place in the firma- the darkness he has called night. He has said ment. But when we explore the unlimited | let there be lights in the firmament of their tracts of that space, which is every where heaven, to divide the day from the night: and around us, we meet with other balls of equal let them be for signs, and for seasons, and or superior magnitude, and from which our for days, and for years; and let them be for earth would either be invisible, or appear as lights in the firmament of heaven, to give small as any of those twinkling stars which light upon their earth; and it was so. And are seen on the canopy of heaven. Why God has also made to them great lights. then suppose that this little spot, little at To all of them he has given the sun to rule least in the immensity which surrounds it, the day; and to many of them has he given should be the exclusive abode of life and of moons to rule the night. To them he has intelligence? What reason to think that made the stars also. And God has set them those mightier globes which roll in other in the firmament of heaven, to give light parts of creation, and which we have discov- unto their earth; and to rule over the day, ered to be worlds in magnitude, are not also and over the night, and to divide the light worlds in use and in dignity? Why should from the darkness; and God has seen that we think that the great Architect of nature, it was good. supreme in wisdom as he is in power, would call these stately mansions into existence, and leave them unoccupied? When we cast our eye over the broad sea, and look at the country on the other side, we see nothing but the blue land stretching obscurely over the distant horizon. We are too far away to perceive the richness of its scenery, or to hear the sound of its population. Why not extend this principle to the still more distant parts of the universe? What though, from this remote point of observation, we can see nothing but the naked roundness of yon planetary orbs? Are we therefore to say, that they are so many vast and unpeopled solitudes; that desolation reigns in every part of the universe but ours; that the whole energy of the divine attributes is expended on one insignificant corner of these mighty works; and that to this earth alone belongs the bloom of vegetation, or the blessedness of life, or the dig-tion of our instruments, we can discover a nity of rational and immortal existence?

But this is not all. We have something more than the mere magnitude of the planets to allege, in favour of the idea that they are inhabited. We know that this earth turns round upon itself; and we observe that all those celestial bodies, which are accessible to such an observation, have the same movement. We know that the earth performs a yearly revolution round the sun; and we can detect in all the planets which compose our system, a revolution of the same kind, and under the same circumstances. They have the same succession of day and night. They have the same agreeable vicissitude of the seasons. To them, light and darkness succeed each other; and the gaiety of summer is followed by the dreariness of winter. To each of them the heavens present as varied and magnificent a spectacle; and this earth the encompassing of which would require the labour of years from one of its puny inhabitants, is but one of the lesser lights which sparkle in their firmament. To them, as well

In all these greater arrangements of divine wisdom, we can see that God has done the same things for the accommodation of] the planets that he has done for the earth which we inhabit. And shall we say, that the resemblance stops here, because we are not in a situation to observe it? Shall we say, that this scene of magnificence has been called into being, merely for the amusement of a few astronomers? Shall we measure the counsels of heaven by the narrow importance of the human faculties? or conceive, that silence and solitude reign throughout the mighty empire of nature; that the greater part of creation is an empty parade; and that not a worshipper of the Divinity is to be found through the wide extent of yon vast and immeasurable regions?

It lends a delightful confirmation to the argument, when, from the growing perfec

new point of resemblance between our earth and the other bodies of the planetary system. It is now 'ascertained, not merely that all of them have their day and night, and that all of them have their vicissitudes of seasons, and that some of them have their moons to rule their night and alleviate the darkness of it. We can see of one, that its surface rises into inequalities, that it swells into mountains and stretches into valleys; of another, that it is surrounded by an atmosphere which may support th respiration of animals; of a third, that clouds are formed and suspended over it, which may minister to it all the bloom and luxuriance of vegetation; and of a fourth, that a white colour spreads over its northern regions, as its winter advances, and that on the approach of summer this whiteness is dissipated-giving room to suppose, that the element of water abounds in it, that it rises by evaporation into its atmosphere, that it freezes upon the application of cold, that it is precipitated in the form of snow, that it covers the ground with a

fleecy mantle, which melts away from the the concave of their firmament. They let heat of a more vertical sun; and that other us know, that though this mighty earth, worlds bear a resemblance to our own, in with all its myriads of people, were to sink the same yearly round of beneficent and in-into annihilation, there are some worlds teresting changes. where an event so awful to us would be Who shall assign a limit to the discove- unnoticed and unknown, and others where ries of future ages? Who can prescribe to it would be nothing more than the disapscience her boundaries, or restrain the ac-pearance of a little star which had ceased tive and insatiable curiosity of man within from its twinkling. We should feel a senthe circle of his present acquirements? We timent of modesty at this just but humilimay guess with plausibility what we can-ating representation. We should learn not ⚫ not anticipate with confidence. The day to look on our earth as the universe of may yet be coming, when our instruments God, but one paltry and insignificant porof observation shall be inconceivably more tion of it; that it is only one of the many powerful. They may ascertain still more mansions which the supreme Being has decisive points of resemblance. They may created for the accommodation of his worresolve the same question by the evidence shippers, and only one of the many worlds of sense which is now so abundantly con- rolling in that flood of light which the sun vincing by the evidence of analogy. They pours around him to the outer limits of may lay open to us the unquestionable ves- the planetary system. tiges of art, and industry, and intelligence. But is there nothing beyond these limits? We may see summer throwing its green The planetary system has its boundary, but mantle over these mighty tracts, and we space has none; and if we wing our fancy may see them left naked and colourless af- there, do we only travel through dark and ter the flush of vegetation has disappeared. unoccupied regions? There are only five, In the progress of years, or of centuries, we or at most six, of the planetary orbs visible may trace the hand of cultivation spreading to the naked eye. What, then, is that multia new aspect over some portion of a plan- tude of other lights which sparkle in our etary surface. Perhaps some large city, firmament, and fill the whole concave of the metropolis of a mighty empire, may ex- heaven with innumerable splendours? The pand into a visible spot by the powers of planets are all attached to the sun; and, in some future telescope. Perhaps the glass circling around him, they do homage to that of some observer, in a distant age, may en- influence which binds them to perpetual able him to construct a map of another attendance on this great luminary. But the world, and to lay down the surface of it in other stars do not own his dominion. They all its minute and topical varieties. But do not circle around him. To all common there is no end of conjecture, and to the observation, they remain immoveable; and men of other times we leave the full assu-each, like the independent sovereign of his rance of what we can assert with the high- own territory, appears to occupy the same est probability, that yon planetary orbs are inflexible position in the regions of immenso many worlds, that they teem with life, sity. What can we make of them? Shall and that the mighty Being who presides in we take our adventurous flight to explore high authority over this scene of grandeur these dark and untravelled dominions? and astonishment, has there planted wor- What mean these innumerable fires lighted shippers of his glory. up in distant parts of the universe? Are they only made to shed a feeble glimmering over this little spot in the kingdom of nature? or do they serve a purpose worthier of themselves, to light up other worlds, and give animation to other systems.

Did the discoveries of science stop here, we have enough to justify the exclamation of the Psalmist, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thon shouldest deign to visit him?" They widen the empire of creation far beyond the The first thing which strikes a scientific limits which were formerly assigned to it. observer of the fixed stars, is their immeaThey give us to see that yon sun, throned surable distance. If the whole planetary in the centre of his planetary system, gives system were lighted up into a globe of fire, light, and warmth, and the vicissitude of it would exceed, by many millions of times, seasons, to an extent of surface several hun- the magnitude of this world, and yet only dreds of times greater than that of the earth appear a small lucid point from the nearest which we inhabit. They lay open to us a of them. If a body were projected from the number of worlds, rolling in their respect- sun with the velocity of a cannon-ball, it ive circles around this vast luminary would take hundreds of thousands of years and prove, that the ball which we tread before it described that mighty interval upon, with all its mighty burden of oceans which separates the nearest of the fixed and continents, instead of being distinguished stars from our sun and from our system. from the others, is among the least of them; If this earth, which moves at more than the and, from some of the more distant planets, inconceivable velocity of a million and a would not occupy a more visible point in half miles a day, were to be hurried from