[Sidenote: The sky, apparent nature of.] We are placed in a world surrounded with illusions. The daily events of our life and the objects before us tend equally to deceive us. If we cast our eyes on the earth, it seems to be made only to minister to our pleasures or our wants. If we direct our attention to the sky, that blue and crystalline dome, the edges of which rest on the flat land or the sea--a glacial vault, which Empedocles thought was frozen air, and the fathers of the Church the lowest of the seven concentric strata of heavens--we find a thousand reasons for believing that whatever it covers was intended by some Good Being for our use. Of the various living things placed with us beneath it, all are of an inferior grade when compared with ourselves, and all seem intended for us. The conclusions at which we thus arrive are strengthened by a principle of vanity implanted in our hearts, unceasingly suggesting to us that this pleasant abode must have been prepared for our reception, and furnished and ornamented expressly for our use. [Sidenote: Anthropocentric ideas of God.] But reflexion teaches us that we came not hither of ourselves, and that doubtless the same Good Being who prepared this delightful abode brought us as tenants into it. From the fact of our own existence, we are insensibly and inevitably led to infer the existence of God; from the favourable circumstances in which our lot is cast, we gather evidences of His goodness; and in the energy which natural phenomena often display, we see the tokens of His power. What other explanation can we give of tempests in the sea or lightning in the heavens? Moreover, it is only during a part of our time--our waking hours--that we are brought into relation with these material things; for the rest, when we are asleep, a state in which we spend more than a third part of our life, we are introduced to other scenery, other beings, another world. [Sidenote: Of the world and heaven.] From these we gather that there are agents of an intangible and more ethereal mould, perhaps of the nature of Him who brought us here, perhaps His subordinates and messengers. Whence do they issue and whither do they go? Is there not beyond the sky above us a region to which our imperfect vision cannot penetrate, but which may be accessible to them from the peaks of elevated mountains, or to be reached only with wings? And thus we picture to ourselves a heaven shut off from earth, with all its sins and cares, by the untroubled and impenetrable sky--a place of light and repose, its pavement illuminated by the sun and countless other shining bodies--a place of peace, but also a place of power.