The Author. You want to know, my dear Theophilus, where I place God? I place Him at the centre of the universe, or, I had better say, at the central focus, which must exist somewhere, of all the stars which compose the universe, and which, carried along by a common motion, circulate in concert around this central focus.
Theophilus. Forgive me, but I do not seize your meaning exactly.
The Author. You will understand it presently. Remember, to start from, that I place God at the common focus of the actual motion of the entire universe. But, where is the common focus? In order to know that, we must first of all know the universe, and all the order of its movements.
Theophilus. All that is explained in the course of your work.
The Author. No, my friend, you are mistaken. In my work I have spoken of the solar system only, and a very incomplete and insufficient idea would be gained of the universe by contemplating that system alone. We must not, as is too often done, confound the world and the universe. The world is our world, that is to say, the solar system, of which we form a part; the universe is the agglomeration of all the worlds or systems similar to our world, or solar system. In the manuscript which you have just read, I have only been able to expound one little corner, one insignificant fraction of the universe.
Theophilus. You call the solar world a little corner.
The Author. Yes. Our whole solar system, the sun, with its immense following of planets and asteroïds, with the satellites of those planets, with the comets which from time to time come sweeping on, to fall into the burning furnace of the radiant star, all that, compared with the universe, is no more than an ear of corn in a huge granary, than a grain of sand upon the shore, than a drop of water in the ocean. The terrible vastness of the universe is such that it is absolutely inaccessible to our measurement, and it is for us the image of the infinite, or the infinite itself. Now, my friend, attend to me. Most certainly God, as to His nature, is absolutely inconceivable by our minds. His essence escapes us, and always must escape us. We can only affirm that He is infinite in His moral perfections, and in His intellectual power. But if, on the one hand, God is The Infinite in the moral order, and if, on the other hand, the universe is The Infinite in the physical order; if one is The Infinite in spirit, and the other is The Infinite in extent, these two ideas, although in themselves inaccessible to human intelligence, are nevertheless of the same order, and may be regarded in contiguity. It is then possible, without laying one's self open to the charge of presumption or absurdity, to place the Infinite, which is called God, in the Infinite which is called the Universe, in other words, to locate the person of God at the common focus of the worlds which compose the Universe.
Theophilus. Your reasoning is just. But you must prove, or, if you prefer the phrase, you must teach me that the universe is truly The Infinite by its extent. I could not admit that assertion without very convincing evidence.
The Author. Very well. Lend me your best attention, and excuse me if my demonstration resembles a lecture on astronomy. I have said that our solar system is only a little corner of the universe. When you look at the vault of the sky on a bright clear night, you see it thickly strewn with stars, which, you will at once acknowledge, it would be impossible to count. But all that you see with the naked eye is next to nothing. Take a good telescope, and direct it to any part of the sky. There where a moment before you saw nothing, you will now discern legions of stars, bright spots will come out upon the darkness of space, like diamonds upon the velvet lining of a casket, each of them a star, exactly like those which we see at night in the sky. And now, let me ask you, do you know what a star is?
Theophilus. Yes, I know from your manuscript, and I had already known, that the stars which we see by night, but which the greater light of the sun hides from us in the day-time, are self-luminous orbs, each the centre of attraction and the lamp to the particular world it lights, and which revolves around it. As a whole company of planets, satellites, asteroïds, and comets revolve round our sun, receiving heat, motion, and light from that great central orb, so, the stars dispersed throughout space, communicate motion and activity to a vast aggregate of planets and satellites. These planets, which revolve round the stars, constitute stellar worlds, analogous to our solar world. We cannot see the planets, which accompany these stars, by reason of their smallness, and the prodigious distance between us and them, beyond the reach of the most powerful telescopes; we only see the suns which govern them, i.e., the stars. But the existence of the fixed stars, like our sun, implies the existence of planets revolving around them.