274 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



feet from us, and her diameter three inches, 

 about that of a cricket ball. Thus the sun 

 would much more than occupy all the space 

 within the moon's orbit. On the same scale, 

 Jupiter would be above ten miles from the sun, 

 and Uranus forty. We see then how thinly 

 scattered through space are the heavenly bodies. 

 The fixed stars would be at an unknown dis- 

 tance, but, probably, if all distances were thus 

 diminished, no star would be nearer to such a 

 one-foot earth, than the moon now is to us. 



On such a terrestrial globe the highest moun- 

 tains would be about l-80th of an inch high, and 

 consequently only just distinguishable. We may 

 imagine therefore how imperceptible would be the 

 largest animals. The whole organized covering 

 of such an earth would be quite undiscoverable by 

 the eye, except perhaps by colour, like the bloom 

 on a plum. 



In order to restore the earth and its inhabi- 

 tants to their true dimensions, we must magnify 

 the length, breadth, and thickness of every part of 

 our supposed models forty millions of times ; and 

 to preserve the proportions, we must increase 

 equally the distances of the sun and of the stars 

 from us. They seem thus to pass off into infinity ; 

 yet each of them thus removed, has its system of 

 mechanical and perhaps of organic processes 

 going on upon its surface. 



But the arrangements of organic life which we 

 can see with the naked eye are few, compared 



