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worthiness of human nature, and its claim to Divine regard― Man is capable in no small degree of a spiritual existence, of 'intercourse with God; and, as we are authorized to term it, of 'such a life with God, and in God, even while he continues in his present human existence. I say authorized, because'Why, do you suppose, gentle reader? because the Bible teaches of a life hid with Christ in God?- because such expressions are used, though reverently, by the most religious men; who 'are, at any rate, authority as to their own sentiments; which are the basis of our reasoning!' We are authorized, because others have certain sentiments, to make their opinions the basis of our reasoning! Then it is to be πάντων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος (MAN!) after all!

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Before we quit entirely the author's argument from geology, we must observe, that even if we were to concede his assertion, that we are compelled by geological evidences, to admit 'that a destitution of creatures who can know, obey, and worship 'God, has existed upon the earth during a far longer period 'than the whole duration of man's race,' we should still demur to the conclusion analogically inferred, that if other planets, ' and other stars, are the seats of habitation, it is rather of such 'habitation as has prevailed upon the earth during the millions, than during the six thousand years' at least we vehemently protest against the conclusion, that such are their permanent inhabitants. There is a fallacy in the insidious transition from the past to the present tense. Such a state has existed on the earth; therefore it is' the state of the planets. Say rather that analogy suggests it has been' also their condition; surmise if you will (from the preponderance of millions over 6,000 years) that it is their state even now: but in all fairness admit that the analogy, if pursued to its close, suggests a glorious sequence to their sometime chaotic state.

To investigate with any precision the curious and original theories which our author throws out with respect to the Nebula, would involve us in dynamics of too recondite a form. We will content ourselves by remarking, that the Nebular hypothesis, i.e., the theory that our system, and any other systems which may be in existence, were framed by the gradual consolidation of a vortex of highly attenuated matter, does not stand the test of refined mathematical analysis. We are sorry to find anything approaching to the exploded doctrines of vortices (so ingeniously propounded by Des Cartes) receiving the support of so learned and weighty an author. Every succeeding revelation of the telescope has afforded fresh conviction to astronomers, that the Nebulæ are vast assemblages of distinct luminaries, and not enormous conglomerates of rarefied star-dust. Perhaps

it may be sufficient, as a popular argument, to object against our author's theory, that it supposes a highly rarefied fog (as it were) of revolving matter to possess sufficient luminosity to become visible by our telescopes; whereas we learn from its immeasurable, its inconceivable distance, that an intensely brilliant object, like our own sun, would be incapable of affecting the retina, even with all aids and appliances of optical art, did it occupy the place of a nebula. We may, therefore, dismiss, as the products of a mind determined to sacrifice philosophy to paradox, the strange conceptions that Nebulæ are of a granulated or curdled texture: they have run into lumps of light, or have been formed originally of such lumps. Highly curious.' Highly curious indeed! and not a little crude.

One can hardly reconcile the grave philosophy of an astronomer with such an intimation as the following:

If we were to say that the spiral nebulæ appear mere shapeless masses, flung off in the work of creating solar systems, we might perhaps disturb those who are resolved to find everywhere worlds like ours; but it seems difficult to suggest any other reason for not saying so.'

We will not imitate the rash conjectures of the Nebula theorist; or we could easily multiply theories, the most improbable of which should afford sufficient reason for not saying so.' But we have the best reason for not saying so,' in the consideration that it is not the method of the Creator to fling off shapeless masses' from his handiwork-and it is scarcely reverent in the creature to attribute to Him such a modus operandi. Were it not for our personal knowledge and assurance that we should malign him-were it not for a chain of pious and reverent reflections even in the present work-we should not hesitate to attribute irreverence to the writer of such language. As it is, we gladly content ourselves with expressing our own dislike of such theories. We shrink with awe from such speculations, as that Meteoric stones are bits of planets, which have failed in the making, and lost their way, till arrested by the resistance of the earth's atmosphere;' and again, The planets and the stars are the lumps which have flown from the potter's wheel of the Great Worker; the shred coils which, in the working, sprang 'from His mighty lathe ;-the sparks which darted from His ' awful anvil when the solar system lay incandescent thereon;'the curls of vapour which rose from the great cauldron of 'creation when its elements were separated.' Such language may be figurative, and may seem to be no more; to us it appears painful, and we prefer to contrast it with the author's expression of undoubting trust,' (we hasten to state our honest conviction of his entire sincerity,) that any view of the creation

' which is found to be true, will also be found to supply material 'for reverential contemplation.'

From his ingenious but fanciful speculations on the Nebula, (which he henceforward regards as established truths), the essayist passes to similar conclusions for the Fixed-stars and planets. By a gradual process of ingenious paradox, and arbitrary assumption, they are robbed of almost every attribute which has been hitherto accorded them. The Fixed-stars are not foci of life; because, as we have seen, the Nebulæ are not centres of inhabited systems.' And, inasmuch as the Moon (which evidently waits in a subordinate position on an inhabited sphere) bears little trace of life, it is concluded that our best chance of learning whether' the planets are inhabited, militates against the theory of a plurality of worlds. Step by step, we are led into conclusions more and more paradoxical, till at last we are told the Earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system!' and are brought to the extraordinary proposition, that the Earth is inhabited, is not a reason for believing 'that the other planets are so, but for believing that they are 'not so.'

We gladly pass on to notice a very striking chapter on the Argument from Design. In our opinion this chapter is (as an effort of argument) worth all the rest of the book. The rest of the book contains several things that are new, and several things that are true. Unhappily, the things that are true (ride chapter on geology) are not new; and those that are new (as of the Nebula) are scarcely true. A cosmical theory is spun out hardly more probable than the gorgeous vision of the distaffbalanced universe at the close of Plato's Polity; and with scarcely less assumption of a docile and assenting audience. But the reader must outvie the submissiveness of a Glaucon who can answer eywye to every oйkovv of our author's. However, in the chapter on Design, he really addresses himself to the gist of the argument pro and con; and though we do not concur in his conclusions, we must confess there is a great deal of beautiful thought, and even eloquent writing in this chapter. We should do the essay injustice if we omitted to quote the following passage:

'The objection will perhaps be urged in another form. It will be said that the other planets have so many points of resemblance with the Earth, that we must suppose their nature and purpose the same. They, like the Earth, revolve in circles round the Sun, rotate on their own axes, have several of them satellites, are opaque bodies, deriving light, and probably heat, from the Sun. To an external spectator of the solar system, they would not be distinguishable from the Earth. Such a spectator would never be tempted to guess that the Earth alone, of all these, neither the greatest nor the least, neither the one with the most satellites, nor the

fewest, neither the innermost nor the outermost of the planets, is the only one inhabited; or, at any rate, the only one inhabited by an intelligent population. And to this we reply, that the largest of the other planets, if we judge rightly, are not like the earth in one most essential respect-their density; and none of them, in having a surface consisting of land and water, except perhaps Mars; that if the supposed external spectator could see that this was so, he might see that the Earth was different from the rest; and he might be able to see the vaporous nature of the outer planets, so that he would no more dream of peopling them, than we do of peopling the grand alpine ridges and valleys which we see in the clouds of a summer sky,'

This, in fact, contains a tolerable sketch of the whole argument on either side. We can only say that to us, neither the facts assumed nor the conclusions involved in the reply, seem satisfactory, or are sufficient to destroy the force of the analogy. But in the following we entirely concur-for a plurality of worlds is no integral part of our creed,' whatever it may be of Sir David Brewster's; nor would its proved falsity disturb our entire acquiescence in the Creator's love and wisdom :

'One such fertile result as the Earth, with all its hosts of plants and animals, and especially with man, an intelligent being, to stand at the head of those hosts, is a worthy and sufficient produce, so far as we can judge of the Creator's ways by analogy, of all the universal scheme.'

Most fully do we concur in the poet's language:

'Behold this midnight splendour, worlds on worlds;
Ten thousand add and twice ten thousand more,
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them all,
And calls the seeming vast magnificence

Of unintelligent creation, poor.'

But, on the other hand, if one world like ours be a sufficient theme for worship and admiring awe,-if we gladly acknowledge that we should be content to believe (if we could) that we alone inhabit creation; we must contend that the religious mind should feel no difficulty (such as our author urged) in an opposite doctrine. A plurality of worlds need not seem to us to diminish that personal regard and care which religion teaches us to recognise in God's providence.

Thou art as much His care, as if beside

Nor man nor angel lived in heaven or earth;
Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide
To light up worlds, or wake an insect's mirth;
They shine and shine with unexhausted store-
Thou art thy Saviour's darling—seek no more.'

We cannot refrain from quoting from the essay we have considered at so much length, a very apparent waste of beauty in creation. that the symmetry and beauty of the

forcible passage on the In answer to the plea heavenly bodies argues

'that every part has been framed with a view to some use; ' that its symmetry and its beauty are the marks of some noble 'purpose,' our author alleges (among other things):—

And

'The diamond, the emerald, the topaz, have got each its peculiar kind of symmetry. Gold and other metals have, for the basis of their forms, the cube, but run from this into a vastly greater variety of regular solids than ever geometer dreamt of. Ice crystallizes by the same laws as other solid bodies; and our Arctic voyagers have sometimes relieved the weariness of their sojourn in those regions, by collecting some of the innumerable forms, resembling an endless collection of hexagonal flowers, sporting into different shapes, which are assumed by flakes of snow. what are we to conceive to be the object and purpose of this? As we have said, that part of the purpose which is intelligible to us is, that we have here a force holding together the particles of bodies, so as to make them solid. But all these pretty shapes add nothing to their intelligible use. Why, then, are they there? They are there, it would seem, for their own sake; because they are pretty; symmetry and beauty are there on their own account; or because they are universal adjuncts of the general laws by which the Creator works. Or rather, we may say, combining different branches of our knowledge, that crystallization is the mark and accompaniment of chemical composition; and that, as chemical composition takes place according to definite numbers, so crystalline aggregation takes place according to definite forms. The symmetrical relations of space in crystals correspond to the simple relations of number in synthesis; and thus, because there is rule, there is regularity; and regularity assumes the form of beauty.'

The following, again, repays one for a perusal of a great mass of heavy writing:

'Do we not, in innumerable cases, see beauties of colour and form, texture and lustre, which suggest to us irresistibly the belief that beauty and regular form are rules of the Creative Agency, even when they seem to us, looking at the creation for uses only, idle and wanton expenditure of beauty and regularity? To what purpose are the host of splendid circles which decorate the tail of the peacock, more beautiful, each of them, than Saturn with his rings? To what purpose the exquisite textures of microscopic objects, more curiously regular than anything which the telescope discloses? To what purpose the gorgeous colours of tropical birds and insects, that live and die where human eye never approaches to admire them? To what purpose the thousands of species of butterflies with the gay and varied embroidery of their microscopic plumage, of which one in millions, if seen at all, only draws the admiration of the wondering schoolboy? To what purpose the delicate and brilliant markings of shells, which live, generation after generation, in the sunless and sightless depths of the ocean? Do not all these examples, to which we might add countless others (for the world, so far as human eye has scanned it, is full of them), prove that beauty and regularity are universal features of the work of creation in all its parts, small and great; and that we judge in a way contrary to a vast range of analogy, which runs through the whole of the universe, when we infer that, because the objects which are presented to our contemplation are beautiful in aspect and regular in form, they must, in each case, be means for some special end, of those which we commonly fix upon as the main ends of the creation, the support and advantage of animals or of man?'