8. We may remark further, that this view of God, as the Author of the Laws of the Universe, leads to a view of all the phenomena and objects of the world, as the work of God; not a work made, and laid out of hand, but a field of his present activity and energy. And such a view cannot fail to give an aspect of dignity to all that is great in creation, and of beauty to all that is symmetrical, which otherwise they could not have. Accordingly, it is by calling to their thoughts the presence of God as suggested by scenes of grandeur or splendor, that poets often reach the sympathies of their readers. And this dignity and sublimity appear especially to belong to the larger objects, which are destitute of conscious life; as the mountain, the glacier, the pine-forest, the ocean; since in these, we are, as it were, alone with God, and the only present witnesses of His mysterious working. 9. Now if this reflection be true, the vast bodies which hang in the sky, at such immense distances from us, and roll on their courses, and spin round their axles with such exceeding rapidity; Jupiter and his array of Moons, Saturn with his still larger host of Satellites, and with his wonderful Ring, and the other large and distant Planets, will lose nothing of their majesty, in our eyes, by being uninhabited; any more than the summer-clouds, which perhaps are formed of the same materials, lose their dignity from the same cause;--any more than our Moon, one of the tribe of satellites, loses her soft and tender beauty, when we have ascertained that she is more barren of inhabitants than the top of Mount Blanc. However destitute the planets and moons and rings may be of inhabitants, they are _at least vast scenes of God's presence,_ and of the activity with which he carries into effect, everywhere, the laws of nature. The light which comes to us from them is transmitted according to laws which He has established, by an energy which He maintains. The remotest planet is not devoid of life, for God lives there. At each stage which we make, from planet to planet, from star to star, into the regions of infinity, we may say, with the patriarch, "Surely God is here, and I knew it not." And when those who question the habitability of the remote planets and stars are reproached as presenting a view of the universe, which takes something from the magnificence hitherto ascribed to it, as the scene of God's glory, shown in the things which He has created; they may reply, that they do not at all disturb that glory of the creation which arises from its being, not only the product, but the constant field of God's activity and thought, wisdom and power; and they may perhaps ask, in return, whether the dignity of the Moon would be greatly augmented if her surface were ascertained to be abundantly peopled with lizards; or whether Mount Blanc would be more sublime, if millions of frogs were known to live in the crevasses of its glaciers.