the night. To them he has made the stars also. And God has set them in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon their earth; and to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God has seen that it was good. "In all these greater arrangements of divine wisdom, we can see that God bus done the same things for the accommodation of the planets that he has done for the earth which we inhabit. And shall we say, that the resemblance stops here, because we are not in a situation to observe it! Shall we say, that this scene of magnificence has been called into being merely for the amusement of a few astronomers? Shall we measure the counsels of heaven by the narrow impotence of the human faculties or conceive, that silence and solitude reign throughout the mighty empire of nature; that the greater part of creation is an empty parade; and that not a worshipper of the Divinity is to be found through the wide extent of yon vast and immeasurable regions?" Had the Doctor concluded here, all had been well; it is the utmost limit of what can be said upon the subject, and all beyond is tiresome and empty rhodomontade. Never, perhaps, was a more childish or ignorant supposition ever broached than that which occurs in the following passage. "Who shall assign a limit to the dis coveries of future ages? Who can prescribe to science her boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable curiosity of man within the circle of his present acquirements? We may guess with plausi bility what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The day may yet be coming, when our instruments of observation shall be inconceivably more powerful. They may ascertain still more decisive points of resemblance. They may resolve the same question by the evidence of sense which is now so abundantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. They may lay open to us the unquestionable vestiges of art, and industry, and intelligence. We may see summer throwing its green mantle over these mighty tracts, and we may see them left naked and colourless after the blush of vegetation has disappeared. In the progress of years or of centuries, we may trace the hand of cultivation spreading new aspect over some portion of a planetay surface. Perhaps some large city, the metropolis of a mighty empire, may expand into a visible spot by the powers of some future telescope. Perhaps the glass of some observer, in a distant age, may enable him to construct the map of another world, and to lay down the surface of it in a all its minute and topical varieties. But there is no end of conjecture, and to the men of other times we leave the full assurance of what' we can assert with the highest probability, that yon planetary orbs are so many worlds, that they teem with life, and that the mighty Being who presides in high authority over this scene of grandeur and astonishment has there planted the worshippers of his glory." We must confess our astonishment, that any man professing common sense, should have entertained an idea half so absurd. Dr. Chalmers ought to have known, or he ought not to have written about astronomy if he did not know, that although the magnifying power of the telescope should be increased to an extent almost incredible, yet thus its means of approximating distant objects would not be proportionably increased. The Doctor ought to have known, that the distinctness of vision keeps no pace with the magnifying power of the glass; but that if the visual angle be increas confusion ensues. The distinctness of ed beyond a certain limit, nothing but the object, moreover, depends as much upon its own brightness, as upon the magnifying powers of the telescope; and thus by increasing the power, we diminish the brightness, which must for ever prevent the improvement of a much then for our chance of witnesstelescope beyond a certain limit. So ing the change of seasons, and the colours of the vegetation in the moon. Taking the magnifying power alone, we should require a telescope with more than seven hundred times the power of Dr. Herschel's forty-foot telescope, to see a neighbour in the moon; but how far it is probable that such an one will ever be constructed, we leave it to the judgment of our readers to determine: and even if such a thing were accomplished, the privacy of the man in the moon would not be broken in upon, as the visual angle would have so greatly exceeded its proper limits. The whole of Dr. Chalmers's supposition is a burlesque upon the subject. We will not quarrel with the Doctor for some few assertions made without any proof at all; such as the regular revolution of the spots in the sun, the apparent recession of the stars in one quarter of the celestial sphere, from each other: whether true or upon false, as they do not bear the argument. We will call the attention of our readers to the following passage. "But, we have now reason to think, that, instead of lying uniformly, and in a state of equi-distance from each other, they are arranged into distinct clustersthat, in the same manner, as the distance of the nearest fixed stars so inconceivably superior to that of our planets from each other, marks the separation of the solar systems so the distance of two contiguous clusters may be so inconceivably su perior to the reciprocal distance of those fixed stars which belong to the same cluster, as to mark an equally distinct separation of the clusters, and to constitute each of them an individual member of some higher and more extended arrangement. This carries us upwards through another ascending step in the scale of magnificence, and there leaves us wildering in the uncertainty, whether even here the wonderful progression is ended." The Doctor has left his readers indeed wildering in uncertainty. What can be his meaning in this exquisite specimen of absurdity? Will any of the Doctor's warmest admirers pretend to attach any decent interpretation to the passage before us? If there be a Bathos in astronomy, the Doctor has surely dived, with all his powers, into the fathomless abyss. Thus much for Lecture the first, containing "a sketch of modern astronomy." The second professes to treat upon the modesty of true science; containing a rhetorical panegyric upon Newton, and some very common place reflections upon modern infidelity, which might have been compre hended in about as many lines as there the diare pages. The third is vine condescension, in redeeming a world so insignificant as our own; an argument which is better stated in the beginning of the fourth Lecture, from which we shall willingly make the following extract. upon "Now it is saying much for the benevolence of God, to say that it sends forth these wide and distant emanations over the surface of a territory so ample-that the world we inhabit, lying imbedded as it does, amidst so much surrounding greatness, shrinks into a point that to the universal eye might appear to be almost imperceptible. But does it not add to the power and to the perfection of this universal eye, that at the very moment it is taking a comprehensive survey of the vast, it can fasten a steady and undistract ed attention on each minute and separate portion of it; that at the very moment it is looking at all worlds, it can look most pointedly and most intelligently to each of them; that at the very moment it sweeps the field of immensity, it can settle all the earnestness of its regards upon every distinct handbreadth of that field; that at the very moment at which it embraces the totality of existence, it can send a most tho rough and penetrating inspection into each of its details, and into every one of its endless diversities? You cannot fail to perceive how much this adds to the power of the all-seeing eye. Tell me, then, if it does not add as much perfection to the benevolence of God, that while it is expatiating over the vast field of created things, there is not one portion of the field overlooked by it; that while it scat. ters blessings over the whole of an infinite range, it causes them to descend in a shower of plenty on every separate habitation; that while his arm is underneath and round about all worlds, he enters within the precincts of every one of them, and gives a care and a tenderness to each individual of their teeming population. Oh! does not the God, who is said to be love, shed over this attribute of his, its finest illustration! when, while he sits in the highest heaven, and pours out his fulness on the whole subordinate domain of Nature and of Providence, he bestows a pitying regard on the very humblest of his children, and sends his reviving Spirit into every heart, and cheers by his presence every home, and provides for the wants of every family, and watches every sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of every sufferer; and while by his wondrous mind the weight of universal government is borne, oh! is it not more wondrous and more excellent still, that he feels for every sorrow, and has an ear open to every prayer.. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be,' says the apostle John, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.' It is the present lot of the angels, that they be hold the face of our Father in heaven; and it would seem as if the effect of this was to form and to perpetuate in them the moral likeness of himself; and that they reflect back upon him his own image; and that thus a diffused resemblance to the Godhead, is kept up amongst all those adoring worshippers who live in the near and rejoicing contemplation of the Godhead. Mark then how that peculiar and endearing feature in the goodness of the Deity, which we have just now adverted tomark how beauteously it is reflected down upon us in the revealed attitude of angels. From the high eminences of heaven, are they bending a wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world; and the repent ance of every one of them spreads a joy and a high gratulation throughout all its dwelling places. Put this trait of the an. gelic character into contrast with the dark and louring spirit of an infidel. He is told of the multitude of other worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence in the conception, and he is seduced by an elevation which he cannot carry, and from this airy summit does he look down on the insignificance of the world we occupy, and pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits and of those attentions which we read of in the New Testament. He is unable to wing his upward way along the scale, either of moral or of natural perfection; and when the wonderful extent of the field is made known to him, over which the wealth of the Divinity is lavished-there he stops, and wilders, and altogether misses this essential perception, that the power and perfection of the Divinity are not more displayed by the mere magnitude of the field, than they are by that minute and exquisite filling up, which leaves not its smallest portions neglected; but which imprints the fulness of the Godhead upon every one of them; and proves, by every flower of the pathless desert, as well as by every orb of immensity, how this unsearchable Being can care for all, and provide for all, and throned in mystery too high for us, can, throughout every instance of time, keep his attentive eye on every separate thing that he has formed, and by an act of his thoughtful and presiding intelligence, can constantly embrace all. "But God, compassed about as he is with light inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so hidden from the ken and conception of all our faculties, that the spirit of man sinks exhausted by its attempts to comprehend him. Could the image of the Supreme be placed direct before the eye of the mind, that flood of splendour, which is ever issuing from him on all who have the privilege of beholding, would not only dazzle, but overpower us. And therefore it is, that I bid you look to the reflection of that image, and thus to take a view of its mitigated glories, and to gather the lineaments of the Godhead in the face of those righteous angels, who have never thrown away from them the resemblance in which they were created; and unable as you are to support the grace and the majesty of that countenance, before which the seers and the prophets of other days fell, and became as dead men, let us, before we bring this argument to a close, borrow one lesson of him who sitteth on the throne, from the aspect and the re ' vealed doings of those who are surrounding it. "The infidel, then, as he widens the field of his contemplations, would suffer its every separate object to die away into forgetfulness; these angels, expatiating as they do, over the range of a loftier uiversality, are represented as all awake to the history of each of its distinct and subordinate provinces. The infidel, with his mind afloat among suns and among systems, can find no place in his already occupied regards, for that humble planet which lodges and accommodates our species: the angels, standing on a loftier summit, and with a mightier prospect of creation before them, are yet represented as looking down on this single world, and attentively marking the every feeling and the every demand of all its families. The infidel, by sinking us down to an unnoticeable minuteness, would lose sight of our dwelling-place altogether, and spread a darkening shroud of oblivion over all the concerns and all the interests of men: but the angels will not so abandon us; and undazzled by the whole surpassing grandeur of that scenery which is around them, are they revealed as directing all the ful ness of their regard to this our habitation, and casting a longing and a benignant eye on ourselves and on our children. The infidel will tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and the number of which outstrips the arithmetic of the human understanding-and then with the hardness of an unfeeling calculation, will he consign the one we occupy, with all its guilty generations, to despair. But he who counts the number of the stars, is set forth to us as looking at every inhabitant among the millions of our species, and by the word of the Gospel beckoning to him with the hand of invitation, and on the very first step of his return, as moving towards him with all the eagerness of the prodigal's father, to receive him back again into that presence from which he had wandered. And as to this world, in favour of which the scowling infidel will not permit one solitary movement, all Heaven is represented as in a stir about its restoration; and there cannot a single son, or a single daughter, be recalled from sin unto righteousness, without an acclamation of joy amongst the hosts of Paradise. Aye, and I can say it of the humblest and the unworthiest of you all, that the eye of angels is upon him, and that his repentance would, at this moment, send forth a wave of delighted sensibility throughout the mighty throng of their innumerable legions." As to the "wave of delighted sensi bility," we leave the reader to stem it as he can; the passage, upon the whole, is not without considerable as merit. The immediate subject of the chapter is indeed very absurd, being 66 upon the sympathy felt for man in the distant places of the creation." If the Doctor will inform us, upon the credit of his own experience, that these inhabitants are all angels, such rejoice in heaven over the sinner that repenteth," we will admit this sympathy as far as he chooses; but if they be not ministering spirits, we have no reason for thinking that they have any more sympathy for us, than we have for them. The Almighty has not been pleased to reveal to us, whether they have or not; we are therefore justified in concluding, that whether they have or not, is a consideration of mighty little consequence to us, in our present state of existence. The remaining Lectures we have carefully read; but whether it be from the inflation of the language, the confusion of the argument, or the dulness of our comprehension, certain it is, that we can discover no chain of reasoning, no connexion of parts, from the beginning to the end. He appears at all times happy in the opportunity of sacrificing argument, connexion, and often common sense itself, to the charms of an unmeaning and useless common place. In his language, Dr. Chalmers suffe s himself to swell into the most inflated verbosity, and to indulge in a poetical diction which is as repugnant to good taste, as it is perplexing to good argument. It is curious to observe the variety of the Doctor's poetical powers in his description only of our earth. In p. 98, it is "a puny ball which Boats its little round." In p. 112, it is "a grain of sand on the high field of immensity." In p. 200, it is "one of the smaller islets which float on the ocean of vacancy." In another place it is a twinkling atom;" in another," a remote and solitary monarchy" These indeed are but a few among the flowers with which the Doctor has contrived to adorn our lower world. The Doctor is very fond of "groping his darkling way" we find this expression p. 193, and again p. 253, and if our memory does not deceive us, much oftener. In point of argument, Dr. Chalmers has left the question just where he found it. Of his talent indeed as a reasoner, we had formed no very high idea, from his former Lectures upon the Evidences of Christianity; and certainly our opinion will not be changed by any thing that we have discovered in the work before us. It is often difficult to discover the meaning of the separate parts of the work; but to trace their connexion one with another is wholly impossible. A more dislocated, disjointed, incoherent production, never yet assumed the title of a proof." In arrangement it is as defective, as in chastity of language and in elegance of taste. 66 The most favourable opinion which can be expressed of the Doctor's work, may be given in the language of Shakspeare," that he draws the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." That there are two or three brilliant passages, we will readily allow; but even these are overlaid with common place imagery, more adapted to a school-boy's decla mation, than to a theological disquisition. We doubt not but that these Discourses, if delivered with suitable action, might have had a wonderful effect at the British Forum, to the sphere of which, both in style, argument, and taste, they seem to be wonderfully adapted. Meretricious ornament, and turgid verbosity will ever have their admirers; and the Doctor has certainly had his. We do not grudge him the applause which he has received; it will not last long, let him make the most of it while it remains. It is our duty to protest against this new-fangled fashion passing into a precedent, lest we should be overwhelmed with a torrent of second hand rhodomontade; and every popular preacher, while he imitated the errors, should expect the reward of the celebrated Doctor. We have been informed that Dr. Chalmers is himself a modest man, and that he entertains a real dislike to the intolerable puffing with which he has been wafted into popular favour. If this be so, we can only advise the Doctor to beware, not of his enemies, but of his friends; for never was a man more injudiciously foisted upon the world, before his eloquence had acquired strength, and his talents stability. If he ever can be made a great or a useful man, it will not be by the flattery of his friends, but by the wholesome discipline of those, whom, probably, he will esteem his enemies. The subject which Dr Chalmers has chosen, is one of no common grandeur and sublimity. How he has treated it, we have had the painful task of showing, at some length, to our readers. We will now show them how he ought to have treated it; and this, not by tiring their patience with dogmas of rhetoric, but by introducing to their notice one of the most perfect compositions in the English language, on the self-same subject, which we shall make no apologies for presenting to them at full length: and then, after having dwelt on the chastened dignity, and majestic comprehension of an Addison; let them return, if they can, to the meretricious verbosity, and disjointed rhodomontade of a Chalmers, "As I was surveying the moon walking in her brightness, and taking her progress among the constellations, a thought rose in me which I believe very often perplexes and disturbs men of serious and contem. plative natures. David himself fell into it in that reflection: When I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou regardest him! In the same manner, when I considered that infinite host of stars, or to speak more philosophically, of suns, which were then shining upon me, with those innumerable sets of planets or worlds which were moving round their respective suns; when I still enlarged the idea, and supposed another heaven of suns and worlds rising still above this which we discovered, and these still enlightened by a superior firmament of luminaries, which are planted at so great a distance, that they may appear to the inhabitants of the former as the stars do to us; in short, while I pursued this thought, I could not but reflect on that little insignificant figure which I myself bore amidst the immensity of God's works. "Were the sun which enlightens this part of the creation, with all the host of planetary worlds that move about him, utterly extinguished and annihilated, they would not be missed more than a grain of sand upon the sea-shore. The space they possess is so exceedingly little in compa rison of the whole, that it would scarce make a blank in the creation. The chasm would be imperceptible to an eye that could take in the whole compass of nature, and pass from one end of the creation to the other; as it is possible there may be such a sense in ourselves hereafter, or in creatures which are at present more exWe see many stars alted than ourselves. by the help of glasses which we do not discover with our naked eyes; and the finer our telescopes are, the more still are our discoveries. Huygenius carries this thought so far, that he does not think it impossible there may be stars whose light is not yet travelled down to us since their first creation. There is no question but the universe has certain bounds set to it; but when we consider that is the work of infinite power, prompted by infinite goodness, with an infinite space to exert itself in, how can our imagination set to it? any bounds "To return therefore to my first thought, I could not but look upon myself with secret horror, as a being that was not worth the smallest regard of one who had so great a work under his care and superintendency. I was afraid of being overlooked amidst the immensity of nature, and lost among that infinite variety of creatures which in all probability swarm through all these immeasurable regions of matter. The "In order to recover myself from this mortifying thought, I considered that it took rise from those narrow conceptions which we are apt to entertain of the divine nature. We ourselves cannot attend to many different objects at the same time. If we are careful to inspect some things, we must of course neglect others. This imperfection which we observe in our, selves, is an imperfection that cleaves in some degree to creatures of the highest capacities, as they are creatures; that is, beings of finite and limited natures. presence of every created being is confined to a certain measure of space, and consequently his observation is stinted to a certain number of objects. The sphere in which we move, and act, and understand, is of a wider circumference to one creature than another, according as we rise one above another in the scale of existence. But the widest of these our spheres has its circumference. When therefore we reflect on the divine nature, we are so used and accustomed to this imperfection in ourselves, that we cannot forbear in some measure ascribing it to him in whom there is no shadow of imperfection. Our reason indeed assures us that his attributes are |