288 RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 



easy to imagine that such difficulties must vanish 

 before him who made us and our faculties ? Let 

 it be considered how enormous a proportion the 

 largest work of man bears to the smallest ; the 

 great pyramid to the point of a needle. This 

 comparison does not overwhelm us, because we 

 know that man has made both. Yet the differ- 

 ence between this proportion and that of the sun 

 to the claw of a mite, does not at all correspond 

 to the difference which we must suppose to 

 obtain between the Creator and the creature. It 

 appears then that, if the first flash of that view 

 of the universe which science reveals to us, does 

 sometimes dazzle and bewilder men, a more 

 attentive examination of the prospect, by the 

 light we thus obtain, shows us how unfounded is 

 the despair of our being the objects of Divine 

 Providence, how absurd the persuasion that we 

 have discovered the universe to be too large for 

 its ruler. 



4. Another ground of satisfactory reflexion, 

 having the same tendency, is to be found in the 

 admirable order and consistency, the subordina- 

 tion and proportion of parts, which we find to 

 prevail in the universe, as far as our discoveries 

 reach. We have, it may be, a multitude almost 

 innumerable of worlds, but no symptom of crowd- 

 ing, of confusion, of interference. All such defects 

 are avoided by the manner in which these worlds 

 are distributed into systems; these systems, each 



