We have hitherto mused on the Divinity, as on Spirit invested with attributes: and this idea of His nature was enough for all requirements antecedently to a creation. At whatever beginning we may suppose such creation to have commenced, whether countless ages before our present [Greek: kosmos], or only a sufficient time to have prepared the crust of earth; and to whatever extent we may imagine creation to have spread, whether in those remote periods originally to our system alone and at after eras to its accompanying stars and galaxies and firmaments; or at one and the same moment to have poured material existence over space to which our heavens are as nothing: whatever, and whenever, and wherever creation took place, it would appear to be probable that some one person of the Deity should, in a sort, become more or less concretely manifested; that is, in a greater or a minor degree to such created minds and senses visible. Moreover, for purposes at least of a concentrated worship of such creatures, that He should occasionally, or perhaps habitually, appear local. I mean, that the King of all spiritual potentates and the subordinate Excellencies of brighter worlds than ours, the Sovereign of those whom we call angels, should will to be better known to and more aptly conceived by such His admiring creatures, in some usual glorious form, and some wonted sacred place. Not that any should see God, as purely God; but, as God relatively to them, in the capacity of King, Creator, and the Object of all reasonable worship. It seems anteriorly probable that one at least of the Persons in the Godhead should for this purpose assume a visibility; and should hold His court of adoration in some central world, such as now we call indefinitely Heaven. That such probability did exist in the human forecast, as concerns a heaven and the form of God, let the testimony of all nations now be admitted to corroborate. Every shape from a cloud to a crocodile, and every place from AEther to Tartarus, have been peopled by man's not quite irrational device with their so-called gods. But we must not lapse into the after-argument: previous likelihood is our harder theme. Neither, in this section, will we attempt the probabilities of the place of heaven: that will be found at a more distant page. We have here to speak of the antecedent credibility that there should be some visible phase of God; and of the shape wherein he would be most likely, as soon as a creation was, to appear to such his creatures. With respect, then, to the former. Creatures, being finite, can only comprehend the infinite in his attribute of unity: the other attributes being apprehended (or comprehended partially) in finite phases. But, unity being a purely intellectual thought, one high and dry beyond the moral feelings, involves none of the requisites of a spiritual, that is an affectionate, worship; such worship as it was likely that a beneficent Being would, for his creatures' own elevation