3. Physical science, with the inexorable logic of facts and observations, has carried its torch into the depths of the expanse of space around us, and has shown the emptiness of all these theories. The Earth has been proven to be, not the pivot of the universe, but one of the smallest of the bodies that circle through immensity, and our sun itself is now known to be only the center of our planetary system; every star that shines in the boundless expanse of the sky is ascertained to be itself a sun, the center of a system of dependent worlds; and innumerable systems thus revealed to us as moving in an orderly interdependence throughout the boundless regions of infinity are found to be separated by distances incommensurable by our thought, though, to our eyes, they seem almost to touch one another. In this view of the universe, governed by eternal laws that proclaim the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator, the Earth is seen to be only an almost imperceptible speck, and one of the least favored — as regards its physical characteristics and its adaptations to human life. Such being the case, the question naturally arises as to why the Almighty should have made it the sole seat of life, the sole habitation of the most favored of God’s creatures? Everything, on the contrary, tends to show that life is everywhere, and that the human family is as infinite as the universe. Science has proven the existence of worlds similar to ours; as God cannot be supposed to have made everything without a purpose, God must necessarily have peopled those worlds with beings capable of administering them.
