Lord, that created the heavens; God himself, that formed the earth, and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed IT _to be inhabited_: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”[26] Here the Psalmist speaks of both the heaven and the earth, saying of the latter that he has _given it_ to the children of men; while the inspired prophet repeatedly speaks of the heavens and the earth, saying that God had given breath to the people upon _it_, and spirit to them that walk _therein_; that he had created man upon _it_; that he had created the earth not _in vain_, but formed “_it_,” to be inhabited. It is not said that he formed the heavens to be inhabited, but the earth. This passage Sir David Brewster has quoted as “a distinct declaration from the inspired prophet, that the earth would have been created IN VAIN, if it had not been formed to be inhabited; and hence we draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot be supposed to have made the worlds of our system, and those in the sidereal universe, in vain, _they_ must have been formed _to be inhabited_.”[27] Is not this a huge “conclusion” to draw from these premises? And do not the words tend rather the other way—to show that _the earth_, with its wondrous adaptations, would have been created in vain, if not to be inhabited; but that the heavens may be created for other purposes, of which man, in the present stage of existence, has not, nor can have, any conception? We have spoken of Sir David Brewster’s drawing a huge conclusion from a passage of Scripture in support of his views of the question before us; but we have to present a still huger conclusion, drawn by him from another glorious passage: “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 visitest him?” “This,” says Sir David, “is a positive argument for a plurality of worlds! We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to the Hebrew poet the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration.... He doubtless viewed these worlds as _teeming with life, physical and intellectual_; as globes which may have required millions of years for their preparation, exhibiting new forms of beings, _new powers of mind_, new conditions in the past, and new glories in the future!” In his _Dialogue_ Dr Whewell thus drily dismisses this extraordinary flight of his opponent: “That the Hebrew poet knew, or thought about, the plurality of worlds, is a fact hitherto unnoticed by the historians of astronomy; to their consideration I leave it.”