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    Dmibtlesa , they are designed for that , among numberless other grand and efficient purposes : and this planet may , in like manner , make a return in kind to those spheres , all being communicating parts of one stupendous whole , arid created each ^ to

    impart light , or prove in some way beneficial , to the others .:, So that an historian , such as Moses , in either of those spheres , might , with strict propriety , record that our earth was made to accommodate , in the way ordained by Providence , the world he inhabited ,

    without authorizing an inference that we exist exclusively for that . purpose . Then , what is there in the passages quoted inconsistent with the soundest philosophy ? : It would be the excess of liyper-criticisin to impute to Moses any thing beyond the . questionable

    error ( none in the view Ijbave taken ) of omission . There is no pretence to charge him with misrepresentation , either from design or from ignorance . How pitiful , therefore , the attempt to fasten upon his words a literal meaning-, which there is scarcely a

    pnma facie reason to suppose was in the writer's contemplation I As well might we conclude him to have intimated that God made nothing else but the x system , parts only of which are exposed to our cognisance ; though every man of common reflection , ad-1

    vertingto the infinity ( a word seldom taken into the account , though indispensable in the true consideration of it ) of God himself , of his power , and of space , must be convinced that the

    last abounds with systems inaccessible to human observation , and commensurate with that portion of his infinite power which the Divine will and wisdom have hitherto brought into activity .

    BREVISP . S . Moses beheld the sun and felt its influence ; the moon , and experienced hers . Of these he speaks in terms appropriate to his limited observation of their effects . " God made the stars also , " is the simple ( and may we not say uncommeuted ?) mention that he trusts himself with in

    regard to them ; for it may well be doubted whether the two succeeding verses , after aueh a slight and , as it were , parenthetical glance at the stars , be applicable to any but the great overruling lights which he had distinguished . Unconscious of , and not

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    duringjto record a conjecture as to their office and bearings in illimitable 3 pace , he might very wisely and modestly forbear to do more than intimate their having been coeval with the phenomena whose perceptible uses he had noticed . B .

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    On * Ordindtiw Services , &c . amongUnitarians . 2 ?

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    Sir , November 17 , 1824 . WITH the decline of priestly usurpation and ghostly pretensions among that sect of Protestant Dissenters which has in some measure been deservedly entitled Rational , the ceremony of ordination fell by degrees into deserved disrepute and general disuse . ¦

    ; It appears from an article in your Intelligence department of last month , ( XIX . 631 , ) that some Unitarian ministers are attempting to revive this exploded custom ; it being stated that " the subject of the revival of orditiation services among Protestant

    Dissenters was discussed in several speeches . - These , I conclude , were only on one side of the question , as the writer adds , that t € there appeared to be but one feeling as to the agreeable and salutary impression produced by the services of that day . "

    I presume to think that the ceremony of the ordination of ministers did not fair into disuse without good and weighty reasons , because men are always reluctant to discontinue any custom until they are convinced of its impropriety ; and from the little I

    have read on the subject , I am of opinion that those reasons cannot easily be reconciled with the revival of the ceremony . It should seem , however , from the report in question ,, that

    the only objection against it , considered in the full discussion at Bolton , is , its liability to be abused to superstitious purposes , which , the writer adds , in its present form is guarded against * It were to be wished , for the

    information of Rational Christians , that the substance of the full discussion which took place at Bolton , had been given in the Repository . From the report , however , I conclude that it was not so . full as could have been

    wished : for if it be supposed that the superstitiousness of the practice in question is its weakest side , the circumstance that occasioned its discontinuance , I fear the supposition would not be borne out by facts . Was it not

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1825, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2532/page/27/