than any other poet, the religion of
the stars. "Night," says Isaac Taylor, "has three daughters, Atheism,
Superstition, and Religion." Following out this fine thought, we see
Atheism looking up with impudent eye, brazen brow, and naked figure, to
the midnight sky, as if it were only a huge toy-shop of glittering
gew-gaws; Superstition shrouding herself in a black mantle, and falling
down prostrate and trembling before these innumerable fires, as if they
were the eyes of an infinite enemy; while Religion turns aloft her
humble, yet fearless form, her tear-trembling yet radiant visage, and
murmurs, "My Father made them all." Young, we need scarcely say, finds in
the nocturnal heavens lessons neither of Atheism nor of Superstition, but
of Religion, and reads in the face of Old Night her divine origin, the
witness she bears to the existence of God, her dependence upon her
Author, and her subordination to His purposes. He had magnified, as
Newton himself could not so eloquently have done, the extent of the
universe; and yet his loyalty to Scripture compels him to intimate that
this system, so far from being God, or infinite, or, strictly speaking,
Divine, is to perish and pass away. One look from the angry Judge, one
uplifting of His rod, and its voluminous waves of glory, like another Red
Sea, are to be dried up, that the people of God may pass through and
enter on the land of the real Immortality, the "inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, and that shall never fade away." We refer our
readers to that most eloquent picture, near the beginning of the Ninth
Night, of the Last Day. We once heard a lecturer on chemistry close a
superb description of the material universe, with the words, "And it is
to shine on for ever." We thought of the words of Peter, "All these
things shall be dissolved." And then we fancied an invisible animalcule
inhabiting one of the mountain peaks of a furnace, looking abroad from
one of its surging spires, and saying, "This wondrous blaze is to burn
for ever," and yet, ere a few hours have passed, the flame is sunk in
ashes, and the animalcule is gone. So the Heavens shall pass away with a
great noise. They shall perish, but Thou God remainest; nay, thou Man,
too, art destined to survive this splendid nursery, and to enter on new
Heavens and a new Earth!

The argument of the "Night Thoughts" may be stated in general to be as
follows:--It is to shew the vanity of man as mortal; to inculcate the
lownes