place, the immensity of the material universe is an
element entirely foreign to the problem of human fate. When
seeking to solve the question of human destiny, we are to study
the facts and prophecies of human nature, and to conclude
accordingly. It is a perversion of reason to bring from far an
induction of nebular magnitudes to crush with their brute weight
the plain indications of the spirit of humanity. What though the
number of telescopic worlds were raised to the ten thousandth
power, and each orb were as large as all of them combined would
now be? what difference would that make in the facts of human
nature and destiny? It is from the experience going on in man's
breast, and not from the firmaments rolling above his head, that
his importance and his final cause are to be inferred. The human
mind, heart, and conscience, thought, love, faith, and piety,
remain the same in their intrinsic rank and capacities whether the
universe be as small as it appeared to the eyes of Abraham or as
large as it seems in the cosmical theory of Humboldt. Thus the
spiritual position of man really remains precisely what it was
before the telescope smote the veils of distance and bared the
outer courts of being.

Secondly, if we do bring in the irrelevant realms of science to
the examination of our princely pretensions, it is but fair to
look in both directions. And then what we lose above we gain
below. The revelations of the microscope balance those of the
telescope. The animalcula magnify man as much as the nebulsa
belittle him. We cannot help believing that He who frames and
provides for those infinitesimal animals quadrillions of whom
might inhabit a drop of water or a leaf and have ample room and
verge enough, and whose vital and muscular organization is as
complicated and perfect as that of an elephant, will much more
take care of man, no matter how numerous the constellations are.
Let us see how far scientific vision can look beneath ourselves as
the question is answered by a few well known facts. In each drop
of human blood there are three million vitalized corpuscular
disks. Considering all the drops made up in this way, man is a
kosmos, his veins galaxies through whose circuits these red
clustering planets perform their revolutions. How small the
exhaling atoms of a grain of musk must be, since it will perfume
every breath of air blowing through a hall for a quarter of a
century, and then not be perceptibly diminished. An