one time, the doctrine formed one of the most formidable weapons of the infidel, and was viewed by Christians in general with suspicion. This is only one illustration of what the whole history of Christianity bears out—that the weapons stolen by the infidel from the armoury of science, are invariably wrenched from his hands, and turned against himself. The doctrine of a plurality of worlds, instead of being regarded as the special property of the infidel, is now engrafted on the Christian faith, as a doctrine most congenial to its spirit. Still, the doctrine is not held so strongly or so generally as the delicacy of the anonymous author of the essay would lead us to infer. By the great mass of Christians, the doctrine is still regarded as a fanciful speculation, and only in a few sanguine and exceptional cases does it form a part of a formal creed.
To those acquainted with the literature of the subject, it is somewhat surprising that, in recent discussions, the name of Andrew Fuller, the distinguished Baptist divine, is never alluded to. No one did more to make the doctrine a matter of Christian belief, or, at least, to divest it of its infidel aspect. He met the arguments of Paine in so exhaustive a manner, that he left little for his successors. Chalmers, in his "Astronomical Discourses," took up the arguments of Fuller, and animated them by the fire of genius. Fuller supplied the hard logic, but, in such a form, the subject was only a dry skeleton. The genius of
