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158 the requisite heat, bv having their prodigious velocity arrested and converted into this other form of force. This is, however, a point of so much interest, and sheds so much light on the wise balancing of forces throughout the material world, that we reserve it for special discussion.

Some advocates for the doctrine of a plurality of worlds do not hesitate to maintain, that the purpose of comets is to be inhabited. They start on the principle, that it is not necessary to prove any probable conditions of life, in order to hold that any body of the system is inhabited; and, consequently, they can assign no limits to their theory. They do not scruple to hold, although the heat is so great as to burn up diamonds like tinder, and although the substance of the comet is rarer than the most perfect vacuum of the air-pump, that there may be living beings on every particle of its matter. The argument employed to support this view, is, that it is quite possible for God to make beings capable of existing in such conditions. But, is it right to make our notions of possibility the basis of a theory of God's providence? The question is one of probability not of poossibility. And if we are to proceed reverentially, we must argue from the known to the unknown, from our experience on this globe to what is probably the Divine procedure in worlds the physical conditions of which are only partially revealed to us.