it to be a strange affair, I scarcely knew which it was: but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a re lation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had any thing in it of childish levity: it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had, that God was too good to do such an action, and also too ́almighty to be under the necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion, that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed to tell their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities-there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, add the Goddess Nature. But the Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind hapr better, is making the story still worse, mankind ould be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Dei

t; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical.

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers; but they ave contracted themselves too much, by leaving he works of God out of their system. Though I everence their philanthropy, I cannot help smilng at the conceit, that if the taste of a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, or a bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matcers. After I had made myself master of the use of he globes, and of the orrery,* and conceived an dea of the infinity of space, and the eternal divisbility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general knowledge of what is called natural philosophy, I egan to compare, or, as I have before said, to conront the eternal evidence those things afford with he Christian system of faith.

Though it is not a direct article of the Christian ystem, that this world that we inhabit, is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up herewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the Creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and

*As this book may fall into the hands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it is for their inormation I add this note, as the name gives no idea f the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name rom the person who invented it. It is a machiney of clock work, representing the universe in miniture, and in which revolution of the earth ound itself and round sun, the revolution of he moon round the earth, the revolution of the lanets round the sun, their relative distances from the sun, as the centre of the whole system, their relative distances from each other, and their different magnitudes, are represented as they really exist, in what we call the heavens.

the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks he believes both, has thought but little of either.

Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent and dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. Several vessels following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and a half to an equatoral degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three years.*

A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be great, but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is suspended, like a bubble or balloon in the air, it is infinitely less in proportion, than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but small; and as will be hereafter shewn, is only one of a system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed,

It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and

*Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a direct circlo; but she is obliged to follow the course of the ocean.

there they stop; but when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when we look upwards into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any walls or boundaries it can have; and, if for the sake of resting our ideas, we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and asks, what beyond that boundary? and, in the same manner, what is beyond the next boundary? and so on, till the fatigued imagination returns and says; there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator, was not pent for room, when he made his world no lar ger than it is; and we have to seek the reason in something else.

If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the Creator has given us the use, as our portion in the immense system of Creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surrounds it, filled, and, as it were, crowded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked eye cani behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally invisible, without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands.

Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.

Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought further, we shall see, perhaps the true reason, at least a very good reason, for our happiness: why the Creator, instead of making one immense world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one.But before I explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake of those that already

D

know, but for those who do not) to show what the system of the universe is.

That part of the universe that is called the sola system (meaning the system of worlds to which ou earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English lan guage, the Sun, is the centre) consists, besides the Sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, be sides the secondary bodies, called the satellites o nadons, of which our earth has one that attends he in her annual revolution round the sun, in like man ner as the other satellites or moons attend the pla nets or worlds to which they severally belong, a may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.

The Sun is the centre, round which those six worlds or planets revolve at different distance therefrom, and in circles concentrate to each other Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same track round the Sun, and continues, at the sam time, turning round itself, in nearly an upright pc sition, as a top turns round itself when it is spin ing on the ground, and leans a little sideways.

It is this learning of the earth (23 1-2 degrees) that occasions summer and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth turned roun itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or le vel of the circle it moves in around the Sun, as a to turns round when it stands erect on the ground, th days and nights would be always of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the seasons would be uniformly the same throughou the year.

Every time that a planet (our earth for example, turns round itself, it makes what we call day an: night; and every time it goes entirely round th Sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the Sun.*

*Those who suppose that the Sun went round the earth every 24 hours, made the same mistake, in idea. that a cook would do in fact, that should make the fire go round the meat, instead of the meat turning round itself towards the fire.