regarded the stars, as things having a reference to the earth, and yet not resembling the earth; as works of God's fingers, very different from the earth with its tribes of inhabitants; as luminaries, not worlds. In the feeling of awe and perplexity, which made him ask, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" there was no mixture of a persuasion that there were, in those luminaries, creatures, like man, the children and subjects of God; and therefore, like man, requiring his care and attention. In asking, "What is man, that thou visitest him?" there was no latent comparison, to make the question imply, "that thou visitest _him_, rather than those who dwell in those abodes?" It was the multitude and magnificence of God's works, which made it seem strange that he should care for a _thing_ so small and mean as man; not the supposed multitude of God's intelligent creatures inhabiting those works, which made it seem strange that he should attend to every _person_ upon this earth. It was not that the Psalmist thought that, among a multitude of earths, all peopled like this earth, man might seem to be in danger of being overlooked and neglected by his Maker; but that, there being only one earth, occupied by frail, feeble, sinful, short-lived creatures, it might be unworthy the regards of Him who dwelt in regions of eternal light and splendor, unsullied by frailty, inaccessible to corruption. 3. This, we can have no doubt, or something resembling this, was the Psalmist's view, when he made the reflection, which we have taken as the basis of our remarks. And even in this view, (which, after all that science has done, is perhaps still the most natural and familiar,) the reflection is extremely striking; and the words cannot be uttered without finding an echo in the breast of every contemplative and religious person. But this view is, as most readers at this time are aware, very different from that presented to us by Modern Astronomy. The discoveries made by astronomers are supposed by most persons to have proved, or to have made it in the highest degree probable, that this view of the earth, as the sole habitation of intelligent subjects of God's government; and of the stars, as placed in a region of which the earth is the centre, and yet differing in their nature from this lower world; is altogether erroneous. According to astronomers, the earth is not a level space, but a globe. Some of the stars which we see in the vault of heaven, are globes, like it; some smaller than the earth, some larger. There are reasons, drawn from analogy, for believing that these globes, the other planets, are inhabited by living creatures, as the earth is. The earth is not at rest, with the celestial luminaries circulating above it, as the ancients believed, but itself moves in a circle about the sun, in the course of every year; and the other planets also move round the sun in like manner, in circles, some within and some without that which the earth describes.