Shall Man, a mere mite in creation, yet endowed with intelligence, to us so wonderful, be the only intelligent intellectual power in existence? May there not be beings governing those ponderous orbs, as much superior to man in size, wisdom, knowledge, and mental energy, as man is to the slug in his garden? Do not analogy and common sense, lead us so to conclude? Doubtless, the field-mouse is surprised when the powder blast shakes the mountains and scatters the blocks of granite broadcast on the plain, and but little comprehends the mental powers of the being Man, who produces the result. Can we not imagine, if we cannot comprehend, the existence of powers as superior to man, as man is to the field-mouse: who can so direct the ponderable as to blast an orb and create from it other orbs, or planets, discovered by the astronomer, through inductive science. That if there has been a disruption of an orb, the violence of the disruption, and the direction of its several parts, would lead us to expect those broken-off portions in certain parts of the heavens; and after patient watching, continued for a series of years, there were they found traversing space, millions of miles distant from our sun -Astrea alone being 247,000,000 miles distant from the sun -verily figures, without a comprehension of the distance being conveyed to the mind of the reader.

Look at that courser of the heavens, Uranus, of whose satellites only one man-Herschel-has ever seen the whole his flight once round the race-course of the universe takes more than two generations of men; his orbit distance is eleven thousand three hundred and fourteen MILLIONS of miles; and it only takes him eighty-four years to perform it. His distance from the sun, is 1,800,000,000 miles; his nearest approach to this world, or earth, or atom, is 1,765,000,000 miles; he belongs to another system, or law from ours; his satellites move in quite the opposite direction to the satellites of the other planets of our solar system, showing that we are only at the alphabet of divine knowledge; and in the contemplation of such scenes of magnitude, of skill, of wisdom; are we not

tempted to huddle ourselves in the sackcloth of humility, and, overawed, forced to feel, that "the Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself; the worlds also are established, that they cannot be moved" from their orbits. The great and the wealthy stud their bonnets, their coats, their shoes with bits of stones they call diamonds; and as light falls on their dresses, the dots sparkle on the robes, and their fellow men gaze, admire, and envy. Lift up your eyes, and behold the diamonds which sparkle on the mantle of Deity; not tied by threads of silk-worms to doublets of sheep's wool, but revolving and intertwining in all the harmonies of circular and elliptic transformations of position and appearance-in all the massiveness and actuality of gold, of silver, of crystals, of diamonds, of oceans, of mountains, of landscapes, of trees, of rivers, of birds, of beasts, of fish, and of men-in all their microscopic splendour of developments. In the blaze of such splendour, in the magnitude and magnificence of such creations-"Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD," and MAN be the conductor of the choral song, "PRAISE YE THE LORD."

Recalling our minds to the mechanism of Nature, and considering those orbs as molten matter, crusted over with the scum or dross, like metal in our crucibles; what is there unlikely in the disruption of those balls of matter by the condensation, in certain directions, of gaseous powers; and in their molten state, assuming the spherical shape as do the shot used by our sportsmen, when in molten stream the metal passing through the sieve, acted upon by the atmosphere, divides and rounds itself into spheres, as rain into drops? Such imponderable and powerful unseen agencies may exist, and are likely to exist, and we can conceive do exist. Have not oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen unseen existences, yet are they not acknowledged to possess energies which in certain proportions, can prove themselves more powerful than iron or granite-putting the feeble, semi-water thing called "human body" out of the question? If so, can we not conceive of in

telligence, mind, or life, inhabiting a body of such unseen essences in certain proportions, and such life holding those essences in cohesion, as life does with the seen particles, called the human body; and on the abstraction of life from either, a dispersion or resolving of the substances into their originals? Let us comprehend, when we remember that water constitutes so large a part of the human body-that that water is composed of the two powers, oxygen and hydrogen, seen merely because of their being only certain proportions of each. Vary the proportions, and they are unseen, yet existent; apply heat, and we have light; alter again, and we have the leading principle of the air we breathe; alter yet again, and all is unseen, but so powerful, so subtle, so destructive, that place all living beings within the sole influence of either, and in a few seconds at one fell swoop, man, beast, and bird would be extinct: Earth's crust would pass through another phase or stratification, and silence would reign unbroken even by the sigh of the last man! If, then, when the moisture is extracted from man, the elements remaining would not make much more than a handful of dust, whilst the other parts are so bulky, so energetic, yet unseen: have we not a connecting link here between the visible and the invisible; between life seen and life unseen ?

The Creation of globes of matter must have had a commencement, a development in far-off time; the mechanism of the lesser leads us to the principle or mechanism of the greater; and when we take a matter-of-fact view of the universe, its thousands, its hundreds of thousands, its millions of globes, as much larger in size than the earth, as the moon is than an orange; when we consider the immeasurable range of their circle sweep, the order and regularity of their appearance and disappearance, in all their grandeur, magnificence and sublimity; in comparison with which the solar system circuit is as the ring fence of a private park, in all its littleness: we are irresistibly carried to some great foundry for globemaking, as far removed in size, as our shot manufactories

are from shot; as time is from eternity; yet there must be such a manufactory; everything on earth in the shape of "art" has the evidence of a designer and workmen. Man is evidently an epitome of the Deity; and the chain of reasoning leads us to the conclusion, that the works of art as displayed in the frame-work of the mountain and the valley, in the ocean and the river, the mammoth tree and the lichen; works of art which to the careless eye and near view, appear rugged or tame, useless or pretty, stupendous or trifling; are parts of a great whole-perfect, symmetrical, and useful; and no more a just criticism, than if the fly, having intelligence and voice, were to say, that Michael Angelo's massive and unique paintings were ugly daubs, because the painter, measuring the distance of the spectator from the object, dashes his lumps of colour on the surface, and by light and shade produces his result. Therefore, O man fly, know that this universe was not made for you, but for higher, nobler intellects or intelligences; who with eye powers as superior to yours, as your eye is inferior to the Rosse telescope, see beauty, loveliness, and order in all. Let even man ascend to Snowdon, pigmy though it be, and let his eye roam over the landscape, the hill, the valley, the water, the trees, the sky, and all is harmony. The spirit in a man seems to repose in God.

As I have an object in view, in thus carrying you on the wings of truth into the regions of immensity; and as it is not often that plodding, energetic men take a look upward, except it be to ascertain the need of an umbrella; lay aside the scales and the laboratory, and for a while change the routine of action, and weigh the evidences and calculate the facts, brought to decide whether you are a mortal or an immortal; much depends on it-much as a man, much as a father, if honoured with that title-much in your relative character; and the man who builds his house in the dry water-course, because he finds it convenient to cradle the sand, and find the gold particles near his location, but overlooks the storm-currents which are certain to descend and rush in turbid

torrents down on, and over him and his, is not more foolish, than he who stakes on the present, body and mind; whereas by a little observation, energy, and common sense, he would find that the worm-pit is not the last of him-that life is continuous-that certain physical, mental, and moral laws are as regular in their action as the earth's course. round the sun; and that non-attention to these laws will produce antagonistic: results, personal and relative. Speed we then upward again to the sun, and in addition to the distant stretch of 95,000,000 miles, consider that it is a ball or substance 1,300,000 times greater than our globe-that if it were possible to make its thickness only the diameter of our earth (8000 miles), the hollow would be sufficiently large to put in all the globes which form our solar system; and let our earth and moon revolve in their annual circle sweep, as at present; and under certain alterations being carried out, for lighting up the spheres inside, instead of outside; the same sky and midnight star scene would apparently be visible to the eye. If, then, we were to stand on the outside crust of the sun, the absence of the internal worlds would not be missed; but thousands upon thousands of glorious, ponderous orbs would be visible, relatively as large and as far from the sun asthesun is from the earth. Some globes speed in the elliptic, others in the circle; some pursue their course in a sort of forked lightning manner, yet all in their order, all in their distance, all in their time; even if that time be five, fifty, five hundred, five thousand years to rush their round; or twenty-six thousand for the so-called fixed stars to take one circle years sweep of the heavens,-no hustle, no bustle, amidst the throng. The chorus song of Æolian music produced by that great, grand instrument of rolling, rushing orbs through space is ORDER; order in composition, order in developments, order in brilliancy, and order in harmony; not one string unstrung, and all embroidered with light; and say you thoughtfully there was no designer, no creator, no workers! that the globes made themselves, lit themselves, leaped into space, developed the laws of attraction and repulsion, positive and negative,