14. We may make another remark which may have an important bearing upon our estimate of the value of the moral scheme of the world which occupies the earth. If, by any act of the Divine Government, the number of those men should be much increased, who raise themselves towards the moral standard which God has appointed, and thus, towards a likeness to God, and a prospect of a future eternal union with him;--such an act of Divine Government would do far more towards making the Universe a scene in which God's goodness and greatness were largely displayed, than could be done by any amount of peopling of planets with creatures who were incapable of moral agency; or with creatures whose capacity for the development of their moral faculties was small, and would continue to be small till such an act of Divine Government were performed. The Interposition of God, in the history of man, to remedy man's feebleness in moral and spiritual tasks, and to enable those who profit by the Interposition, to ascend towards a union with God, is an event entirely out of the range of those natural courses of events which belong to our subject; and to such an Interposition, therefore, we must refer with great reserve; using great caution that we do not mix up speculations and conjectures of our own, with what has been revealed to man concerning such an Interposition. But this, it would seem, we may say:--that such a Divine Interposition for the moral and spiritual elevation of the human race, and for the encouragement and aid of those who seek the purification and elevation of their nature, and an eternal union with God, is far more suitable to the Idea of a God of Infinite Goodness, Purity, and Greatness, than any supposed multiplication of a population, (on our planet or on any other,) not provided with such means of moral and spiritual progress. 15. And if we were, instead of such a supposition, to imagine to ourselves, in other regions of the Universe, a moral population purified and elevated without the aid or need of any such Divine Interposition; the supposed possibility of such a moral race would make the sin and misery, which deform and sadden the aspect of our earth, appear more dark and dismal still. We should therefore, it would seem, find no theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a Plurality of Worlds of Moral Beings: while, to place the seats of such worlds in the Stars and the Planets, would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.