Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/202

 What, indeed, could be the use of such enormous bodies, if they were not intended for the residence of men? If man builds a house, he intends that it should be inhabited; and when God creates a world, He designs it for a similar purpose; He has expressly said so. All that God has created in outward nature is with a view to the ultimate manifestations of human life. He said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." All nature lives though each department of it lives by a condition of life regulated by its distinctive forms. Minerals grow; vegetables live and grow; animals feel, live, and grow. The design for creating the lower is that it may contribute something to the advantage of the higher; and the highest, which is man, is designed to receive the wisdom of God: hence He said, "I have created man for my glory." This is the end for the sake of which the former exist. Man was the last object of the Divine creation, all that preceded was for his sake, that he might acknowledge the Lord and enjoy the privileges conferred upon him. These facts, which are so peculiarly visible in reference to the end for which this earth was created, must be conceded to have equal force in reference to every other planet; hence they exist as the very basis for human habitations. Without this we must imagine that those enormous earths, some of which would make a number of worlds greater than our own, are mere wandering solitudes in the great expanse, and that they exhibit little else but the frightful aspects of desolation, stillness, and death. But this is utterly inconsistent with what we know of the order, activity, and manifestations of the Divine wisdom. Doubtless that wisdom brought them into being that rational life might exist upon them; and the munificent end of all such ercation is the rearing of an indefinite number of human beings in the possession of intelligence