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Rh solely for the special behoof and benefit of the puny dwellers on this puny atom which we call our earth. But we of a generation immeasurably more advanced in knowledge, to whom the beneficence of the has deigned to unclasp the first volume of the great Book of Nature, that we may read the marvellous page, and bow down and adore the Infinite Wisdom that conceived, the Infinite Power that made this glorious world; we, who are permitted to walk in the light of knowledge and science, before which the desponding comment of “Athena’s wisest son” upon human knowledge, that

stands rebuked and disproved; we who may span with a thought the inconceivable distance which separates our planet from the “threshold of space”—we can no longer entertain the same crude and “unintelligent” notion of the “nature and purpose” of the works of the Divine Hand.

The discoveries of science have disclosed to us in each planet, which, like our own, revolves in regulated periods round the sun, provisions in all respects similar to those found to exist here:—the same structure, form, and materials—the same action and influence of the same calorific and illuminating agency—the same alternations of light and darkness, produced by the same means—the same pleasing succession of seasons—the same diversity of climate—the same agreeable distribution of land and water.

With the overwhelming evidence of these most