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leads me to see a world in every atom. | forth an upholding influence among the The one taught me, that this mighty globe, orbs and the movements of astronomy, can with the whole burden of its people, and of fill the recesses of every single atom with its countries, is but a grain of sand on the the intimacy of his presence, and travel, in high field of immensity. The other teaches all the greatness of his unimpaired attrime, that every grain of sand may harbour butes, upon every one spot and corner of within it the tribes and the families of a the universe he has formed. busy population. The one told me of the insignificance of the world I tread upon. The other redeems it from all its insignificance; for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firmament. The one has suggested to me, that beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may lie fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe. The other suggests to me, that within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may be a region of invisibles; and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might there see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point so small, as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but where the wonder working God finds room for the exercise of all his attributes, where he can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of

his glory.

They, therefore, who think that God will not put forth such a power, and such a goodness, and such a condescension, in behalf of this world, as are ascribed to him in the New Testament, because he has so many other worlds to attend to, think of him as a man. They confine their view to the informations of the telescope, and forget altogether the informations of the other instrument. They only find room in their minds for his one attribute of a large and general superintendance, and keep out of their remembrance, the equally impressive proofs we have for his other attribute of a minute and multiplied attention to all that diversity of operations, where it is he that worketh all in all. And then I think, that as one of the instruments of philosophy has heightened our every impression of the first of these attributes, so another instrument has no less heightened our impression of the second of them-then I can no longer resist the conclusion, that it would be a transgression of sound argument, as well as a daring of impiety, to draw a limit around the doings of this unsearchable God-and, should a professed revelation from heaven, tell me of an act of condescension, in behalf of some separate world, Now, mark how all this may be made to so wonderful that angels desired to look meet the argument of our infidel astrono- into it, and the Eternal Son had to move mers. By the telescope they have discov- from his seat of glory to carry it into acered, that no magnitude, however vast, is complishment, all I ask is the evidence of beyond the grasp of the Divinity. But by such a revelation; for, let it tell me as much the microscope we have also discovered, as it may of God letting himself down for that no minuteness, however shrunk from the benefit of one single province of his dothe notice of the human eye, is beneath minions, this is no more than what I sce the condescension of his regard. Every lying scattered, in numberless examples, addition to the powers of the one instru- before me; and running through the whole ment, extends the limit of his visible do- line of my recollections; and meeting me minions. But, by every addition to the in every walk of observation to which I powers of the other instrument, we see can betake myself; and, now that the mieach part of them more crowded than be-croscope has unveiled the wonders of anfore, with the wonders of his unwearying other region, I see strewed around me, with hand. The one is constantly widening the a profusion which baffles my every attempt circle of his territory. The other is as con- to comprehend it, the evidence that there stantly filling up its separate portions, with is no one portion of the universe of God all that is rich, and various, and exquisite. too minute for his notice, nor too humble In a word, by the one I am told that the for the visitations of his care. Almighty is now at work in regions more distant than geometry has ever measured, and among worlds more manifold than numbers have ever reached. But, by the other, I am also told, that, with a mind to It is a wonderful thing that God should comprehend the whole, in the vast com- be so unincumbered by the concerns of a pass of its generality, he has also a mind whole universe, that he can give a constant to concentrate a close and a separate at- attention to every moment of every inditention on each and on all of its particu-vidual in this world's population. But, lars; and that the same God, who sends wonderful as it is, you do not hesitate to

As the end of all these illustrations, let me bestow a single paragraph on what I conceive to be the precise state of this argument.

admit it as true, on the evidence of your I do not enter at all into the positive eviown recollections. It is a wonderful thing dence for the truth of the Christian Revethat he whose eye is at every instant on so lation, my single aim at present being to many worlds, should have peopled the dispose of one of the objections which is world we inhabit with all the traces of the conceived to stand in the way of it. Let varied design and benevolence which abound me suppose then that this is done to the in it. But, great as the wonder is, you do satisfaction of a philosophical inquirer, and not allow so much as the shadow of im- that the evidence is sustained, and that the probability to darken it, for its reality is same mind that is familiarised to all the what you actually witness, and you never sublimities of natural science, and has been think of questioning the evidence of obser- in the habit of contemplating God in assovation. It is wonderful, it is passing won- ciation with all the magnificence which is derful, that the same God, whose presence around him, shall be brought to submit its is diffused through immensity, and who thoughts to the captivity of the doctrine of spreads the ample canopy of his adminis- Christ. Oh! with what veneration, and tration over all its dwelling-places, should, gratitude, and wonder, should he look on with an energy as fresh and as unexpen- the descent of him into this lower world, who ded as if he had only begun the work of made all these things, and without whom creation, turn him to the neighbourhood was not any thing made that was made. around us, and lavish on its every hand- What a grandeur does it throw over every breadth, all the exuberance of his goodness, step in the redemption of a fallen world, and crowd it with the many thousand va- to think of its being done by him who unrieties of conscious existence. But, be the robed him of the glories of so wide a mowonder incomprehensible as it may, you narchy, and came to this humblest of its do not suffer in your mind the burden of a provinces, in the disguise of a servant, and single doubt to lie upon it because you do took upon him the form of our degraded not question the report of the miscroscope. species, and let himself down to sorrows You do not refuse its information, nor turn and to sufferings, and to death, for us. In away from it as an incompetent channel this love of an expiring Saviour to those of evidence. But to bring it still nearer to for whom in agony he poured out his soul, the point at issue, there are many who there is a height, and a depth, and a length, never looked through a microscope; but and a breadth, more than I can comprewho rest an implicit faith in all its revela- hend; and let me never, never from this tions; and upon what evidence, I would moment neglect so great a salvation, or lose ask? Upon the evidence of testimony-my hold of an atonement, made sure by upon the credit they give to the authors of the books they have read, and the belief they put in the record of their observations. Now, at this point I make my stand. It is wonderful that God should be so interested in the redemption of a single world, as to send forth his well-beloved Son upon the errand, and he, to accomplish it, should, mighty to save, put forth all his strength, and travail in the greatness of it. But such wonders as these have already multiplied upon you; and when evidence is given of their truth, you have resigned your every ⚫ judgment of the unsearchable God, and rested in the faith of them. I demand, in the name of sound and consistent philosophy, that you do the same in the matter before us-and take it up as a question of evidence—and examine that medium of testimony through which the miracles and informations of the Gospel have come to your door-and go not to admit as argument here, what would not be admitted as argument in any of the analogies of nature and observation-and take along with you in this field of inquiry, a lesson which you should have learned upon other fieldseven the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, that his judgments are unsearchable, and his ways are past finding out.

him who cried, that it was finished, and brought in an everlasting righteousness. It was not the visit of an empty parade that he made to us. It was for the accomplishment of some substantial purpose; and, if that purpose is announced, and stated to consist in his dying the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God, let us never doubt of our acceptance in that way of communication with our Father in heaven, which he hath opened and made known to us. In taking to that way, let us follow his every direction with that humility which a sense of all this wonderful condescension is fitted to inspire. Let us forsake all that he bids us forsake. Let us do all that he bids us do. Let us give ourselves up to his guidance with the docility of children, overpowered by a kindness that we never merited, and a love that is unequalled by all the perverseness and all the ingratitude of our stubborn nature-for what shall we render unto him for such mysterious benefits-to him who has thus been mindful of us-to him who thus has deigned to visit us?

But the whole of this argument is not yet exhausted. We have scarcely entered on the defence that is commonly made against the plea which infidelity rests on the wonderful extent of the universe of

God, and the insignificancy of our assigned portion of it. The way in which we have attempted to dispose of this plea, is by insisting on the evidence that is every where around us, of God combining with the largeness of a vast and mighty superintendence, which reaches the outskirts of creation, and spreads over all its amplitudes-the faculty of bestowing as much attention, and exercising as complete and manifold a wisdom, and lavishing as profuse and inexhaustible a goodness on each of its humblest departments, as if it formed the whole extent of his territory.

entire absence of all observation in its behalf, he can pass on to the distinct affirmative testimony of the Bible.

We do think that this lays open a very interesting track, not of wild and fanciful, but of most legitimate and sober-minded speculation. And anxious as we are to put every thing that bears upon the Christian argument into all its lights; and fearless as we feel for the result of a most thorough sifting of it; and thinking as we do think it, the foulest scorn that any pigmy philosopher of the day should mince his ambiguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignoIn the whole of this argument we have rant admirers, or that a half-learned and looked upon the earth as isolated from the superficial public should associate with the rest of the universe altogether. But ac- christian priesthood, the blindness and the cording to the way in which the astrono-bigotry of a sinking cause-with these feelmical objection is commonly met, the earthings, we are not disposed to blink a single is not viewed as in a state of detachment question that may be started on the subject from the other worlds, and the other orders of the Christian evidences. There is not of being which God has called into exist- one of its parts or bearings which needs the ence. It is looked upon as the member of shelter of a disguise thrown over it. Let a more extended system. It is associated the priests of another faith ply their prudenwith the magnificence of a moral empire, tial expedients, and look so wise and so as wide as the kingdom of nature. It is not wary in the execution of them. But Chrismerely asserted, what in our last Discourse tianity stands in a higher and a firmer attihas been already done, that for any thing tude. The defensive armour of a shrinking we can know by reason, the plan of re- or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is demption may have its influences and its the naked majesty of truth; and with all bearings on those creatures of God who the grandeur of age, but with none of its people other regions, and occupy other infirmities, has she come down to us, and fields in the immensity of his dominions; gathered new strength from the battles she that to argue, therefore, on this plan being has won in the many controversies of many instituted for the single benefit of the world generations. With such a religion as this we live in, and of the species to which we there is nothing to hide. All should be belong, is a mere presumption of the infi- above boards. And the broadest light of del himself; and that the objection he rears day should be made fully and freely to ciron it, must fall to the ground, when the culate throughout all the secrecies. But vanity of the presumption is exposed. The secrets she has none. To her belong the Christian apologist thinks he can go fur-frankness and the simplicity of conscious ther than this-that he cannot merely ex-greatness; and whether she grapple it with pose the utter baselessness of the infidel the pride of philosophy, or stand in fronted assertion, but that he has positive ground opposition to the prejudices of the multitude, for erecting an opposite and a confronting she does it upon her own strength, and assertion in its place and that after having spurns all the props and all the auxiliaries neutralised their position, by showing the of superstition away from her.

DISCOURSE IV.

On the Knowledge of Man's Moral History in the Distant Places of Creation.

"Which things the angels desire to look into."-1 Peter i. 12.

THERE is a limit, across which man can- | stance that is within reach of his hand. He not carry any one of his perceptions, and can smell a flower that is presented to him. from the ulterior of which he cannot gather a He can taste the food that is before him. single observation to guide or to inform him. He can hear a sound of certain pitch and While he keeps by the objects which are intensity; and, so much does this sense of near, he can get the knowledge of them hearing widen his intercourse with exterconveyed to his mind through the ministry nal nature, that, from the distance of miles, of several of the senses. He can feel a sub-it can bring him in an occasional intimation.

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over the whole face of which he hath inscribed the evidence of his high attributes, in all their might, and in all their manifestations.

But of all the tracks of conveyance which God has been pleased to open up between the mind of man, and the theatre by which he is surrounded, there is none by which he so multiplies his acquaintance with But man has a great deal more to keep the rich and the varied creation on every him humble of his understanding, than a side of him, as by the organ of the eye. It mere sense of that boundary which skirts is this which gives to him his loftiest com- and terminates the material field of his mand over the scenery of nature. It is this contemplations. He ought also to feel by which so broad a range of observation how within that boundary, the vast mais submitted to him. It is this which ena-jority of things is mysterious and unknown bles him, by the act of a single moment, to to him; that even in the inner chamber of send an exploring look over the surface of an his own consciousness, where so much lies ample territory, to crowd his mind with the hidden from the observation of others, there whole assembly of its objects, and to fill his is also, to himself, a little world of incomvision with those countless hues which di- prehensibles; that if stepping beyond the versify and adorn it. It is this which carries limits of this familiar home, he look no him abroad over all that is sublime in the further than to the members of his family, immensity of distance; which sets him as there is much in the cast and the colour of it were on an elevated platform, from every mind that is above his powers of diwhence he may cast a surveying glance vination; that in proportion as he recedes over the arena of innumerable worlds; from the centre of his own personal expewhich spreads before him so mighty a pro- rience, there is a cloud of ignorance and vince of contemplation, that the earth he secrecy, which spreads, and thickens, and inhabits, only appears to furnish him with throws a deep and impenetrable veil over the pedestal on which he may stand, and the intricacies of every one department of from which he may descry the wonders of human contemplation; that of all around all that magnificence which the Divinity him his knowledge is naked and superficial, has poured so abundantly around him. It and confined to a few of those more conspicuis by the narrow outlet of the eye, that the ous lineaments which strike upon his senses; mind of man takes its excursive flight over that the whole face both of nature and of those golden tracks, where, in all the ex-society, presents him with questions which haustlessness of creative wealth, lie scatter- he cannot unriddle, and tells him how beed the suns, and the systems of astronomy.neath the surface of all that the eye can But oh! how good a thing it is, and how be-rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a coming well, for the philosopher to be humble even amid the proudest march of human discovery, and the sublimest triumphs of the human understanding, when he thinks of that unscaled barrier, beyond which no power, either of eye or of telescope, shall ever carry him: when he thinks that on the other side of it, there is a height, and a depth, and a length, and a breadth, to which the whole of this concave and visible firmament dwindles into the insignificancy of an atom-and above all, how ready should he be to cast his every lofty imagination away from him, when he thinks of the God, who, on the simple foundation of his word, has reared the whole of this stately architecture, and, by the force of his preserving hand, continues to uphold it; aye, and should the word again come out from him, that this earth shall pass away, and a portion of the heavens which are around it, shall again fall back into the annihilation from which he at first summoned them, what an impressive rebuke does it bring on the swelling vanity of science, to think that the whole field of its most ambitious enterprises may be swept away altogether, and there remain before the eye of him who sitteth on the throne, an untravelled immensity, which he hath filled with innumerable splendours, and

most unsearchable latency; aye, and should he in some lofty enterprise of thought, leave this world, and shoot afar into those tracks of speculation which astronomy has opened— should he, baffled by the mysteries which beset his every footstep upon earth attempt an ambitious flight towards the mysteries of heaven-let him go, but let the justness of a pious and philosophical modesty go along with him; let him forget not, that from the moment his mind has taken its ascending way for a few little miles above the world he treads upon, his every sense abandons him but onethat number, and motion, and magnitude, and figure, make up all the barrenness of its elementary informations-that these orbs have sent him scarce another message, than told by their feeble glimmering upon his eye, the simple fact of their existence-that he sees not the landscape of other worldsthat he knows not the moral system of any one of them-nor athwart the long and trackless vacancy which lies between, does there fall upon his listening ear, the hum of their mighty populations.

But the knowledge which he cannot fetch up himself from the obscurity of this wondrous but untravelled scene, by the exercise of any one of his own senses, might be fetched to him by the testimony of a competent messenger. Conceive a native

of one of these planetary mansions to light upon our world, and all we should require, would be, to be satisfied of his credentials, that we may tack our faith to every point of information he had to offer us. With the solitary exception of what we have been enabled to gather by the instruments of astronomy, there is not one of his communications about the place he came from, on which we possess any means at all of confronting him; and, therefore, could he only appear before us invested with the characters of truth, we should never think of any thing else than taking up the whole matter of his testimony just as he brought it to us. It were well had a sound philosophy schooled its professing disciples to the same kind of acquiescence in another message, which has actually come to the world; and The informations of the Bible upon this has told us of matters still more remote subject, are of two sorts-that from which from every power of unaided observation; we confidently gather the fact, that the and has been sent from a more sublime and history of the redemption of our species is mysterious distance, even from that God known in other and distant places of the of whom it is said, that "clouds and dark-creation-and that, from which we indisness are the habitation of his throne;" and tinctly guess at the fact, that the redemption treating of a theme so lofty and so inacces- itself may stretch beyond the limits of the sible, as the counsels of that Eternal Spirit, world we occupy. "whose goings forth are of old, even from everlasting," challenges of man that he should submit his every thought to the authority of this high communication. O! had the philosophers of the day known as well as their great Master, how to draw the vigorous land-mark which verges the field of legitimate discovery, they should have seen when it is that philosophy becomes vain, and science is falsely so called; and how it is, that when philosophy is true to her principles, she shuts up her faithful votary to the Bible, and makes him willing to count all but loss, for the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of him crucified.

and it is with this precise feeling of ambiguity that we open the record of that embassy which has been sent us from heaven, to see if we can gather any thing there, about other places of the creation, to meet the objections of the infidel astronomer. But, while we pursue this object, let us have a care not to push the speculation beyond the limits of the written testimony; let us keep a just and a steady eye on the actual boundary of our knowledge, that, throughout every distinct step of our argument, we might preserve that chaste and unambitious spirit, which characterizes the philosophy of him who explored these distant heavens, and, by the force of his genius, unravelled the secret of that wondrous mechanism which upholds them.

And, here it may shortly be adverted to, that, though we know little or nothing of the moral and theological economy of the other planets, we are not to infer, that the beings who occupy these widely extended regions, even though not higher than we in the scale of understanding, know little of ours. Our first parents, ere they committed that act by which they brought themselves and their posterity into the need of redemption, had frequent and familiar intercourse with God. He walked with them in the garden of paradise; and there did angels hold their habitual converse; and, should the same unblotted innocence which But let it be well observed, that the object charmed and attracted these superior beings of this message is not to convey information to the haunts of Eden, be perpetuated in to us about the state of these planetary re- every planet but our own, then might each gions. This is not the matter with which of them be the scene of high and heavenly it is fraught. It is a message from the throne communications, an open way for the mesof God to this rebellious province of his do- sengers of God be kept up with them all, minions; and the purpose of it is, to reveal and their inhabitants be admitted to a share the fearful extent of our guilt and of our dan- in the themes and contemplations of angels, ger, and to lay before us the overtures of and have their spirit exercised on those reconciliation. Were a similar message things, of which we are told that the angels sent from the metropolis of a mighty em- desired to look into them; and thus, as we pire, to one of its remote and revolutionary talk of the public mind of a city, or the districts, we should not look to it for much public mind of an empire-by the well-fre information about the state or economy of quented avenues of a free and ready cirthe intermediate provinces. This were a culation, a public mind might be formed departure from the topic on hand-though throughout the whole extent of God's sinstill there may chance to be some incidental less and intelligent creation-and, just as allusions to the extent and resources of the we often read of the eyes of all Europe whole monarchy, to the existence of a simi- being turned to the one spot where some lar spirit of rebellion in other quarters of the affair of eventful importance is going on, land, or to the general principle of loyalty there might be the eyes of a whole universe by which it was pervaded. Some casual turned to the one world, where rebellion references of this kind may be inserted in against the Majesty of heaven had planted such a proclamation, or they may not-its standard; and for the re-admission of

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