stellar universe, is engaged in a useless occupation. On the contrary, they would tell us that any pursuit which tends to enlarge our knowledge of the material cosmos, to make us better acquainted with the heavenly bodies and the laws that govern their movements, is a high and noble use, even though it add nothing to our immediate physical comfort. Useless, indeed, so far as relates to supplying our bodily wants, may be the business of those engaged in astronomical observations. But are they not ministering to some deeper wants of our nature—wants not less real and imperative than those of the body? Have not the labors of the astronomer helped to enlarge our knowledge of the universe, and thus contributed to the growth and expansion of the mind, and the consequent intellectual and moral progress of our race?
But the grandeur of the material universe as disclosed to us by modern science, is nothing in comparison with the grandeur of that other universe—the universe of mind. Planets and suns with all their beautiful laws and phenomena, and all their quiet, orderly, rhythmic movements, are indeed wonderful; but the human soul with all its endowments—its amazing powers of thought and affection, its faculty of boundless growth in knowledge and virtue, its untold and inconceivable capabilities of bliss and of suffering—this is far more wonderful. By the side of this, how feeble and almost insignificant the glory and grandeur of all material orbs! How much more is this like God himself, than planets or suns or aught else in the created universe! And shall we conclude that a knowledge of the universe of souls—of
