predominant element in such a survey. The first impression from these
glittering points in space may, indeed, be that of a _social_ congregated
host. And yet how perfect the _seclusion_; so that while there is granted
a bare knowledge of each other's existence, the possibility of any more
intimate communion, without a change in present laws, is placed altogether
beyond the reach of hope. What immeasurable fields of space intervene even
between those that seem the nearest to each other on the celestial canvas!

We may say, then, that whatever may be reserved for a distant future, this
perfect seclusion seems now to be the predominant feature, or law, of the
Divine dispensations. No doubt our Creator could easily have formed us
with sensitive powers, or a sensitive organization, capable of being
affected from immensely remote, as well as from comparatively near
distances. There is nothing inconceivable in such an adaptation of the
nervous system to a finer class of etherial undulations as might have
enabled us to see and hear what is going on in the most distant worlds.
But it hath not so pleased Him to constitute us; and we think, with all
reverence be it said, that we see wisdom in the denial of such powers
unless accompanied by an organization which would, on the other hand,
utterly unfit us for the narrow world in which we have our present
probationary residence. If the excitements of our limited earth bear with
such exhausting power upon our sensitive system, what if a universe should
burst upon us with its tremendous realities of weal or woe!

It is in kindness, then, that each world is severed, for the present, from
the general intercourse, and that so perfectly that no amount of science
can ever be expected to overcome the separation. "HE hath set a bound
which we can not pass," except in imagination. Even analogical reasoning
utterly fails, or only lights us to the conclusion that the diversities of
structure, of scenery, and of condition, must be as great, and as
numberless as the spaces, and distances, and positions they respectively
occupy. The moral sense, however, is not wholly silent. It has a voice "to
which we do well to take heed" when the last rays of reason and analogy
have gone out in darkness. It can not be, it affirms--it can not be, that
the worlds on worlds which the eye and the telescope reveal to us are but
endless repetitions of the fallen earth on which we dwell. What a pall
would such a thou