Let us go but one step farther into space to show the fallacy of the assumption that this terrestrial God created all planets, stars, etc. At the present time it is considered that the star Alpha (a) Centauri in the southern hemisphere is the nearest to the earth. Its distance is more than 200,000 times that of the earth from the sun, or twenty trillions of miles. Light would require about four and a half years to travel this enormous distance. The stars which we see at such immense distances are suns. The vast distance at which the stars are known to be, precludes the thought of their shining, like the planets or the moon, by reflecting back the light of our sun. They must be self-luminous, and are doubtless each a center of a system of planets and satellites. Our sun is but a star. As we see only the suns of these distant systems, so their inhabitants see only the sun of our system, and that as a small star. Arrogant, conceited humanity, with an unbounded assurance and self-confidence, mixed with profound ignorance, have the impudence to claim that their terrestrial God created all the stars, suns, and planetary systems that are so far away in space that the eye of man cannot behold them--no, not even with the strongest instrument yet made. We may be compared to maggots on a big cheese, crawling over its surface; they may with equal propriety claim that their cheese is the only cheese ever created, and that it was made for their own special use, and that all other cheeses were made only for their benefit. Some of the maggots might equally claim that there was only one God--the man who made the cheese. That is, that man, the maggot's god, made the cow that gave the milk that produced the cheese whereon the maggot dwelt. Let every planet have its God, And every God its planet. Much mystery lies in the word, You simply have to scan it. Let every man his own God make, God in man, pure and elect, Let common sense and reason wake! Knowledge, truth, makes man perfect. Go search your God through depths of space On suns and stars infinite. The mind expands to every place. To distance without limit. If you don't find the God you seek Search within yourselves. Perchance, You'll find your God, quite good and meek, But not in your ignorance. CHAPTER XXIX. EVERY MAN HIS OWN GOD. Writers and thinkers with a strong theological bias, seem to fear that the world would go to pieces if the scriptural God or Gods were deposed. They seem to apprehend that the moral and political economy would seriously suffer, and the moral idea especially be destroyed.