When we come to consider the vastness of these regions of darkness, over which _no light has traveled for millions of years_, and remember also that astronomers have looked clear through the nebulae, and find that they bear no more proportion to the infinite darkness behind them, than the sparks of a chimney do to the extent of the sky against {159} which they seem projected, so far from imagining the solar system to be infinite, we stand confounded at its relative insignificance. There is no possible evasion of this great fact. It cannot be objected "that stars may exist at vast distances, whose light has not yet reached the limits of our system;" for there is no possible distance over which light could not have traveled, during eternal duration. But the eternal existence of these stars is the very thing which the atheist is concerned to prove. If we admit that these worlds had a beginning, we are compelled to seek a cause for that beginning: that is to say, a Creator. Nor will it answer the purpose to say, "that these dark regions may be filled with dark stars." If it could be proven that some stars shine, while others are dark; then why this difference? Variety is an effect, and demands a prior cause. Worlds therefore do not exist by the necessity of their own nature, wherever there is room for them, but must have had a pre-existent, external and supernatural cause of their existence in the places where they exist. This implies design--will-- God. In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do we not hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, and asking, "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth" (_Job xxxviii_. 33). How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may be ever {160} streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. And yet, because man has traced a little concerning one or two of these laws, we have deemed our astronomy complete. We have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, to believe that the discovery of these forces exhausts the treasures of infinite wisdom.