Boundlessness of the Creation.

About the time of the invention of the telescope, another instrument was formed, which laid open a scene no less wonderful, and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man. This was the microscope. The one led me to see a system in every star: the other leads me to see a world in every atom. The one taught page 205 me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of its immensity: the other teaches me that every grain of sand may harbour within it the tribes and families of a busy population. The one told me of the insignificance of the world I tread upon: the other redeems it from all its insignificance; for it tells me that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as the glories of the firmament. The one has suggested to me, that beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may be fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe: the other suggests to me that within and beneath all that minuteness which the unaided eye of man has been able to explore, there may be a region of invisibles; and that could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might see a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within the compass of a point so small as to elude all the powers of the microscope; but where the wonder working God finds room for the exercise of all his attributes, where he can raise another mechanicism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidence of his glory.

—Dr. Chalmers.