99 Messier
THE
PLURALITY OF WORLDS.
On Nature's Alps I stand, And see a thousand firmaments beneath! A thousand systems, as a thousand grains! So much a stranger, and so late arrived, How shall man's curious spirit not inquire What are the natives of this world sublime, Of this so distant, unterrestrial sphere, Where mortal, untranslated, never strayed? NIGHT THOUGHTS. |
BY
EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D.D.,
PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF
THEOLOGY AND GEOLOGY.
BOSTON:
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
50 WASHINGTON STREET.
1854.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court ofthe District of Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
Although the opinions presented in the following Essay are put forwardswithout claiming for them any value beyond what they may derive from thearguments there offered, they are not published without some fear ofgiving offence. It will be a curious, but not a very wonderful event, ifit should now be deemed as blamable to doubt the existence ofinhabitants of the Planets and Stars, as, three centuries ago, it washeld heretical to teach that doctrine. Yet probably there are many whowill be willing to see the question examined by all the light whichmodern science can throw upon it; and such an examination can beundertaken to no purpose, except the view which has of late beengenerally rejected have the arguments in its favor fairly stated andcandidly considered.
Though Revealed Religion contains no doctrine relative to theinhabitants of planets and stars; and though, till within the last threecenturies, no Christian thinker deemed such a doctrine to be required,in order to complete our view of the attributes of the Creator; yet itis possible that at the present day, when the assumption of suchinhabitants is very generally made and assented to, many persons have somingled this assumption with their religious belief, that they regard itas an essential part of Natural Religion. If any such persons find theirreligious convictions interfered with, and their consolatory impressionsdisturbed, by what is said in this Essay, the Author will deeply regretto have had any share in troubling any current of pious thoughtbelonging to the time. But, as some excuse, it may be recollected, thatif such considerations had prevailed, this very doctrine, of thePlurality of Worlds, would never have been publicly maintained. And ifsuch considerations are to have weight, it must be recollected, on theother hand, that there are many persons to whom the assumption of anendless multitude of Worlds appears difficult to reconcile with thebelief of that which, as the Christian Rev