142 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER. 



filled with good.&quot; &quot; O Lord, thou preservest 

 man and beast ! How excellent is thy loving- 

 kindness ! Therefore the children of men shall 

 put their trust under the shadow of thy wings : 

 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fat 

 ness of thy house,&quot;* (of the table thou hast 

 spread in thy world for all thine offspring,) &quot; and 

 thou shall make them drink of the river of thy 

 pleasures.&quot; One excellent practical effect which 

 wight flow from such contemplations would be, 

 to inspire us with feelings of humanity towards 

 the inferior order of animals, and to prevent us 

 from wantonly and unnecessarily torturing, or 

 depriving them of existence. For since the Cre 

 ator and Preserver of all has so curiously orga 

 nized their bodies, and fitted them for the different 

 regions in which they reside, and so carefully 

 provided for all their wants, it must be His will 

 that they should enjoy happiness according to the 

 extent of their capacities ; and, therefore, they 

 ought to be considered as necessary parts of our 

 sublunary system. Another practical lesson we 

 may derive from such surveys, is. to place an un 

 shaken dependence upon God for our temporal 

 subsistence, while we, at the same time, exert 

 all our faculties in the line of active duty. 

 &quot; Blessed is the man who trusteth in him ; for 

 there is no want to them that fear him. The 

 young lions may suffer hunger, but they that fear 

 the Lord shall not want any good thing.&quot; He 

 who decks the lily of the vale, and spreads out 

 a plentiful table to the fowls of heaven, to the 

 beasts of the forests, to the creeping insects, and 

 oven to the microscopic animalculae, will never 

 fail to supply the necessary wants of those who 

 &quot; do His will, and hearken to the voice of his 

 commandments.&quot; And if, at any time, we be 

 found destitute of daily food, and pining away in 

 penury and squalid disease, we have too much 

 reason to conclude, that in one way or another, 

 either our deviation from the path of rectitude, 

 or our distrust of divine providence, or our want 

 of prudence and economy, has procured for us 

 these things. 



I have said, that it is chiefly in the world in 

 which we dwell, that the dispensations of Pro 

 vidence can be distinctly traced. But we must 

 nevertheless admit that the care and superin 

 tendence of God are as minutely exercised in the 

 distant regions of the universe as in our terres 

 trial sphere ; though we are not permitted, at 

 present, to inspect the particular details of His 



* This, and several other similar passages, may be 

 considered as more especially applicable to the 

 bounty of providence which God has provided for 

 all his creatures. The practice of spiritualizing- 

 such passages, as it is termed, has a tendency to 

 caricature Scripture, and to twist it from its pre 

 cise and sublime references, to accord with the vague 

 fancies of injudicious minds. The literal meaning 

 of Scripture is always the most appropriate, em 

 phatic, and sublime : but it may, in some cases, be 

 used hy way of accommodation, in illustrating divine 

 subjects, when it is applied with judgment and dis 

 crimination. 



procedure in reference to other orders of intelH 

 gences. We are not, however, altogether igno 

 rant of some prominent features of the physical 

 and moral economy of other worlds, in conse 

 quence of the discoveries of modern astronomical 

 science. 



With respect to their physical economy, we 

 behold a striking variety in the divine arrange 

 ments. We perceive one planetary world sur 

 rounded by two splendid and magnificent rings, 

 one of (hern 204,000, and the other 184.000 miles 

 in diameter, stretching across its celestial cano 

 py from one end of the heavens to another mov 

 ing with majestic grandeur around its inhabitants 

 every ten hours, and diffusing a light equal to 

 several thousands of moons like ours which 

 may be considered as a visible and permanent 

 emblem of the majesty and glory of their Cre 

 ator. We perceive connected with the same 

 globe, seven moons, all larger than ours, of dif 

 ferent magnitudes, and placed at different dis 

 tances, and revolving in different periods of time 

 around that spacious world. The diversified as 

 pects of these rings, as viewed from the different 

 regions of the planet at different times, and the 

 variety of appearances produced by the alternate 

 rising and setting, culmination, and frequent 

 eclipses, and other aspects of the moons, must 

 present to the inhabitants a very grand and va 

 ried and magnificent scene of divine operation.* 

 On the other hand, we behold another planetary 

 globe, destitute both of rings and moons, but 

 which has the starry heavens presented to view 

 nearly in the same aspect in which we behold 

 them. We perceive a third globe much larger 

 than them both, capable of containing 200 times 

 the number of the inhabitants of our world ac 

 companied in its course with four moons to dif 

 fuse light in ihe absence of the sun, and to di 

 versify the aspect of its sky. In some of these 

 worlds, the succession of day and night is ac 

 complished within the space often hours; in 

 others, this revolution is not completed till after 

 the lapse of twenty-four hours, or of as many 

 days. In some, the days and nights are nearly 

 equal on every part of their surface, and they 

 have little variety of seasons ; in others, the va 

 riety in the length of the days, and the vicissi 

 tudes of the seasons, are nearly the same as those 

 we experience in our terrestrial world. Around 

 some there appears a dense atmosphere, while 

 others are environed with atrr.ospheres more rare 

 and transparent. Some move in the vicinity of 

 the sun, and enjoy an abundant efflux of light 

 and heat, while others are removed to the dis 

 tance of eighteen hundred millions of miles from 

 that central luminary. Some finish the revolu 

 tion of their year in a few months ; while others 

 require twelve, thirty, or even eighty of our years&quot; 

 to complete their annual round. Some appear 



Seetre .late, Fig. 7 



