theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a plurality of worlds of moral beings; while, to place the seats of those worlds in the stars and the planets would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.”[38] Should it be urged, that if the creation of _one_ world of such creatures as man exalts so highly our views of the dignity and importance of the plan of creation, the belief in many such worlds must elevate still more our sentiments of admiration and reverence of the greatness and goodness of the Creator; and must be a belief, on that account, to be accepted and cherished by pious minds, Dr Whewell replies in the following weighty passage:— “We cannot think ourselves authorised to assert cosmological doctrines, _selected arbitrarily by ourselves_, on the ground of their exalting our sentiments of admiration and reverence for the Deity, _when the weight of all the evidence which we can obtain respecting the constitution of the universe, is against them_. It appears to me, that to discover one great scheme of moral and religious government, which is the spiritual centre of the universe, may well suffice for the religious sentiments of men in the present age; as in former ages, such a view of creation was sufficient to overwhelm men with feelings of awe, and gratitude, and love, and to make them confess, in the most emphatic language, that all such feelings were an inadequate response to the view of the scheme of Divine Providence which was revealed to them. The thousands of millions of inhabitants of the earth, to whom the effects of the Divine love extend, will not seem, to the greater part of religious persons, to need the addition of more, in order to fill our minds with vast and affecting contemplations, so far as we are capable of pursuing such contemplations. The possible extension of God’s spiritual kingdom upon the earth will probably appear to them a far more interesting field of devout meditation than the possible addition to it of the inhabitants of distant stars, connected, in some inscrutable manner, with the Divine Plan.”[39]