throughout all time. Hereafter I propose to discuss such considerations, and to apply them to another purpose. But I wish now to turn from the earth to consider how the heavens present to us instances, altogether more striking, of apparent waste in nature.

Take, first, the sun-that orb whence all the supplies of force and energy known to us on earth may truly be said to be derived. What can seem clearer, at a first view, than that the sun is set at the centre of the solar system to supply light and heat to the worlds constituting that system? So viewing him, and remembering the wonderful processes taking place within his globe, and the marvellous manner in which the fires of the great central furnace are sustained, we justly regard the sun as a fitting subject for our admiring contemplation. But yet, so soon as we inquire into the adaptation of the sun's powers to the work which we have regarded as specially assigned to him, we recognise a mystery of mysteries in the seeming waste of his gigantic energies. Our earth receives less than the 2000 millionth part of the heat and light emitted by the sun; all the planets together receive less than the 230 millionth part; the rest is seemingly scattered uselessly through the interstellar depths. To other worlds, circling around other suns, our sun may indeed appear as a star; but how minute the quantity of light and heat so received from him compared with the enormous quantity apparently wasted. The portion which seems squandered is scarcely affected at all by such small uses; and that

portion used to warn and to illuminate the solar system. And then consider what is the actual amount of energy thus seemingly wasted. I have computed (adopting Sir J. Herschel's estimate of the amount of heat poured by the sun upon each square mile of the earth's surface) that the sun emits in each second as much heat as would result from the burning of 11,600,000,000,000,000 tons of coal, and of this enormous amount of energy the portion utilized (that is, the heat received by the various members of the solar system) corresponds only to that due to the consumption of about 50 millions of tons-only fifty millions out of 11,600 millions of millions.

And now, remembering that what is true of the sun is true of his fellow-suns, the stars, that all the thousands of stars we see, all the millions revealed by the telescope, as well as many myriads of times as many more that lie beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, are suns similarly pouring heat and light into space, how enormous, according to our conceptions, is the waste of energy. The force wasted is, in fact, very nearly the whole of the inconceivable amount expended.

How, then, are we to view the startling fact thus brought before us? Must we admit that so much of the Creator's work is vain in truth as in appearance? or, on the other hand, must we reject the evidence of science? As it seems to me, we need do neither one nor the other. We have before us a great mystery; but it is not a new thing to find the ways of God unsearchable by man. Our faith in the wisdom of God need not be shaken unless we

assume that our science teaches us the whole of that which is. But inasmuch as science itself has taught us over and over again how little we really know, how little we can know, I think that we may very well believe in this instance that the seeming mystery arises from the imperfectness of our knowledge. If we could see the whole plan of the Creator, instead of the minutest portion; if we could scan the whole of space, instead of the merest corner; if all time were before us, instead of a span, we might pronounce judgment. As it is, what, after all, has science taught us but what we had already learned? The judgments of God are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out.'

A NEW THEORY OF LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS.

Two opposite views have been entertained respecting life in other worlds. One is the theory which Brewster somewhat strangely described as the creed of the philosopher and the hope of the Christian, that nearly all the orbs which people space are the abode of life. Brewster, Chalmers, Dick, and a host of other writers, have adopted and enforced this view, Brewster going so far as to maintain the probability that life may exist upon the moon, dead though her surface seems, or beneath the glowing photosphere of the sun. But even where so extreme an opinion has not been entertained, the believers in the theory of a plurality of worlds have maintained that all the celestial orbs have been created to be, and are at this present time, the abodes of life, or else minister to the wants of creatures living in other orbs. It is worthy of notice that this view has been entertained even by astronomers, who, like the Herschels, have devoted their lives to the scientific study of the heavens. So completely has the theory been identified, as it were, with modern astronomy, that we find the astronomer passing from a statement respecting some observed fact about a planet, to the consideration of the bearing of the fact on

the requirements of living creatures on the planet's surface, without expressing any doubt whatever as to the existence of such creatures. For example, Sir John Herschel, writing about the rings of Saturn, after discussing Lardner's supposed demonstration that the eclipses caused by the rings would last but for a short time; * says, 'This will not prevent, however, some considerable regions of Saturn from suffering very long total interception of the solar beams, affording to our ideas but an inhospitable asylum to animated beings, ill compensated by the feeble light of the satellites; but we shall do wrong to judge of the fitness or unfitness of their condition from what we see around us, when perhaps the very combinations which convey to our minds only images of horror may be, in reality, theatres of the most striking and glorious displays of beneficent contrivance.' And many other such cases might be cited.

Before passing to the opposite view of life in other worlds, a view commonly associated with the name of the late Dr. Whewell, I shall venture to quote a few passages from his Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics, in which he writes very much like a supporter of the theory he subsequently opposed in his 'Plurality

*This is disproved, and the justice of Herschel's views demonstrated in chapter vii. of my treatise on Saturn, in which work I give a table of the climatic relations in Saturn (for I also once adopted the theory criticized above) the time and place of sunrise and sunset in Saturnian latitudes in Saturnian Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, and so on. Labour wasted, I fear, except as practice in Geometrical