illustrating, them from every pulpit: fixing in the minds and associating in the affections, alike of age and youth, the great truths in the planetary and sidereal universe, on which the doctrine of More Worlds than One must respectively rest—the philosopher scanning with a new sense the sphere in which he is to study; and the Christian the temples in which he is to worship.—Such, in his own words, is Sir David Brewster’s final and authoritative exposition of the CREED of the philosopher, and the HOPE of the Christian:—of such a nature are to be the _new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness_; and such, henceforth, as he has indicated, becomes the duty of the Christian teacher in the Family, in the School, in the Pulpit! So absolutely and irrefragably, it seems, are demonstrated the stupendous facts of astronomical science on which this Creed and this Faith depend: so unerring are our telescopes and other instruments, that he who does not receive this “Creed” is no philosopher, nor he who rejects the “Hope” a Christian. But, in the mean time, how inconceivably embarrassing to such a philosopher, and to such a Christian, is the possibility that many, or a few years hence, such immense improvements may be made in telescopes, or in other modes of acquiring a knowledge of the celestial structures, as to demonstrate to the sense, as well as reason, of us impatient and presumptuous tenants of the earth, that the planets are _not_ inhabited! that the fixed stars are not suns, and have not a planet a piece—no, not even a solitary planet among them! Thus rendering our astounded and dismayed philosopher homeless and creedless, and the Christian helpless and hopeless:—the former one of those who _professing themselves to be wise become fools_;[124] the latter, _likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand_.[125] The “_Future_” of the Essayist is of a different kind, and adumbrated with becoming humility and diffidence. “I did not,” he says, “venture further than to intimate, that when we are taught, that _as we have borne the image of the Earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly_, we may find, in even natural science, reasons for opening our minds to the reception of the cheering and elevating announcement.”[126]