"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him?" So said the royal psalmist. And, in a sense, time should only have deepened the astonishment which this question expresses. For man's ideas of the magnificence of the heavens have grown with the course of ages; and though the stars in the transparent atmosphere of Palestine shone with a brilliancy unknown to us, our conceptions of the heavens are grander and more true than David's--thanks to the discoveries of modern science. As navigators, so soon as by help of the mariner's compass they could push their bold prows into untravelled seas, were ever adding new continents to the land and new islands to the ocean, so, since the invention of the telescope, science has been discovering new stars in the heavens; filling up their empty spaces with stellar systems, and vastly enlarging the limits of creation. And since every new orb has added to the lustre of Jehovah's glory, another world to His kingdom, another jewel to His crown, these discoveries, by exalting God still higher, have added point and power to the old question, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him?" Yet, apart from man's sinfulness, I cannot feel that he is beneath the regards of the Maker and Monarch of the starry heavens. I can fancy that an earthly sovereign who, dwelling apart from his people, is jealous of their intrusion within his palace gates, and sits enthroned amid an exclusive though brilliant circle of proud and powerful barons, may neither know nor care about the fortunes of lowly cottagers; but there could be no greater mistake than out of such a man's character to weave our conceptions of God, or fancy that because we are infinitely beneath His rank, we are therefore beneath His notice. A glance at the meanest of His creatures refutes and rebukes the unworthy thought. It needs no angels from heaven to inform us that God cherishes good will to all the creatures of His hand, nor deems the least of them beneath His kind regards. Look at bird, or butterfly, or beetle! Observe the lavish beauty that adorns His creatures, the bounty that supplies their wants, the care taken of their lives, the happiness, expressed in songs or merry gambols or mazy dances, which He has poured into their hearts. The whole earth is full of the glory of God's infinite benignity and good will. Insignificant as I--a speck on earth, and earth itself but a speck in creation--seem to myself when, standing below the starry vault, I look up into the heavens, yet, apart from the thought that I am a sinner, I cannot say, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? How can I, when I see Him mindful of the brood that sleep in their rocking nest, of the moth that flits by my face on muffled wing, of the fox that howls