man at the expense of the
accepted teachings of astronomy.34 With argument and ridicule, wit
and reason, he endeavored to make it out that the stars are no
better than gleaming patches of vapor. We are the exclusive
autocrats of all immensity. Whewell has followed up this species
of thought with quite remarkable adroitness, force, and
brilliance.35 Whether his motive in this undertaking is purely
scientific and artistic, or whether he is impelled by a fancied
religious animus, having been bitten by some theological fear
which has given him the astrophobia, does not clearly appear.

32 As specimens of the large number of treatises which have been
published asserting the destruction of the whole creation in the
Day of Judgment, the following may be consulted. Osiander, De
Consummatione Saculi Dissertationum Pentus. Lund, De Excidio
Universi Totali et Substantiali. Frisch, Die Welt im Feuer, oder
das wahre Vergehen und Ende der Welt durch den letzen Sundenbrand.
For a century past the opinion has been gaining favor that the
great catastrophe will be confined to our earth, and that even
this is not to be annihilated, but to be transformed, purged, and
beautified by the crisis. See, e. g., Brumhey, Ueber die endliche
Umwandlung der Erde durch Feuer.

33 Kurtz, Bibel and Astronomie. Simonton's Eng. trans., ch. vi.
sect. 14: Incarnation of God.

34 Vorlesungen uber die ewige Personlichkeit des Geistes. 35 Of a
Plurality of Worlds: An Essay.

Brewster has replied to Whewell's disturbing essay in a volume
which more commands our sympathies and carries our reason,
but is less sustained in force and less close in logic.36 Powell
has still more recently published a very valuable treatise on the
subject;37 and with this work the discussion rests thus far,
leaving, as we believe, the popular faith in an astronomic
universe of inhabited worlds unshaken, however fatal the
legitimate implications of that faith may be to other doctrines
simultaneously held.38 It is curious to observe the shifting
positions taken up by skepticism in science, now, with powerful
recoil from the narrow bigotries of theology, eagerly embracing
the sublimest dreams of astronomic speculation, and now inclining
to the faith that the remoter stars are but brilliant globules
trickling from the poles of some terrible battery in the godless
heights of space. But if there be any thing sure in science at
all, it is that the material creation is inconceivably