ty of worlds are limited. The inhabitants
of each of the worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same
opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary
motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the planets revolve
in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same universal school of
science presents itself to all.

Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us
exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science,
to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in
like manner throughout the immensity of space.

Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his
wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we
contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary
idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of
space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so
happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction
to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to
consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge
the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.

CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE
CHRISTIANS.

BUT, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the
christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only
one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate
of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in
a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years.
Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power
of the Creator!

From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that
the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his
protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our
world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And,
on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless
creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case,
the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes
God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world
to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary
interval of life.

It has been