in existence several thousand years, or as long as ours!
But this is only the beginning. A similar kind of calculation is to be made for Saturn, for Uranus, for the newly discorered and extreme planet Neptune (all much larger than our earth): Neptune—which though newly discovered, is not newly existent, for it is now known to have long been influencing, by its attractive power, the course of the neighbouring planet Uranus, and probably had been doing so for thousands of years before the latter was itself discovered. Yes! cold, distant Neptune has doubtless its millions and myriads of millions of intelligent and happy beings, thinking themselves perhaps, as we are apt to think ourselves, the chief and most interesting people in the universe. And they, too, have, doubtless, their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears, their diseases and recoveries. There, also, as here, are tears shed at the death of little infants, of adults, and of old men, as these, from time to time, take their departure to the spiritual world: though, indeed, it may be, that being more highly spiritual in their views than the people of our earth, they may consider death in its true aspect, namely, as a simple mode of entrance upon a new life: if so, their tears soon cease to flow. Still, thousands and tens of thousands must be daily pouring from the planet Neptune into the spiritual state of existence; and what a vast world must these thousands and millions of Neptunian spirits now collected, constitute. And being, no doubt, of a different genius and character from the inhabitants of our earth,—therefore, as difference of character constitutes distance in the spiritual state, those collected spirits, that Neptunian spiritual orb (so
