Remark, in the second place, that we are plainly very incompetent critics of a system so vast as the universe. We are only able to survey a small portion of it, and the little that we perceive we imperfectly comprehend. We see but an exceedingly short way before us into the future, and can form only the vaguest and most general conception of the final goal to which creation, as a whole, is tending. This need not, and ought not, to prevent us from recognising the evident indications of intelligence which fall within our range of apprehension; but it may well cause us to hesitate before pronouncing that this or that peculiarity, which appears to us a defect, is an absolute error or evil. There is no one who would not feel it very unwise to pronounce an apparent defect, even in an elaborate human mechanism with which he was only imperfectly acquainted, an unmistakable blunder, and surely far more caution is required in a critic of the constitution of the universe; for, as Bishop Butler truly observes, "The most slight and superficial view of any human contrivance comes abundantly nearer to a thorough knowledge of it than that part which we know of the government of the world does to the general scheme and system of it." All Nature is one great whole, and each thing in it has, as I have previously had to insist, a multitude of uses and relations, with reference to all of which it must be viewed, in order that a complete and definitive judgment regarding it may be formed. Has this fact been adequately realised by those who have criticised, in the manner which has been indicated, the wisdom displayed in the system of Nature? I think not. In regard to the moon, it would seem that, even if that luminary were intended to serve no other purpose than to give light on earth, it is not the Maker of it who has blundered, but Comte and Laplace. The real consequences of their pretended improvement have been shown to be that the moon would give sixteen times less light than it does, and be in constant danger of extinction. In other words, what they have demonstrated is, that their own mathematical and mechanical knowledge was so inferior to that of the intelligence which placed the moon where it is, that they could not appreciate the correctness of its procedure in the solution of a comparatively simple astronomical problem. But even if the change which they suggested would really have rendered the moon a better lamp to the inhabitants of the earth, they were not entitled to infer that it was an error to have placed it elsewhere, unless they were warranted to assume that the moon was meant merely to be a lamp to the inhabitants of the earth. But that they were clearly not entitled to assume. To give light on earth is a use of the moon, but it is foolish to imagine that this is its sole use. It serves other known ends, such as raising the tides, and may serve many ends wholly unknown to us. So in regard to volcanoes, earthquakes, &c.