Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/65

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LUNAR LANDSCAPE.
49

barren surface of the moon, and fails to discover such proofs of design as are abundantly strewn over the surface of our globe.

It is the fact of life that furnishes those innumerable adaptations, which irresistibly impress the mind with a superintending intelligence, and raise the devout heart to the contemplation of Him who made and ruleth over all. Did we find life in the moon, we would, at the same time, find inexhaustible and novel illustrations of a designing mind. On our globe everything is delicately adjusted to the cosmical laws that have sway over it as a member of the solar system. The very curve of the snowdrop, as it bends its head, is regulated by the attractive power of the globe. The flower could not thrive in a world which attracted more or less. A slight change in the constitution of the atmosphere, or in the alternation of night and day, would be fatal to many forms of life. Did a comet come into collision with our earth, so as to change its axis, new conditions, wholly destructive to a wide range of animal and vegetable life, would be introduced. If life exists in the moon, there must be special adaptations corresponding to its physical constitution. The fact that bodies are nearly six times lighter in the moon than on the earth, would admit of their being on a much more colossal scale. Trees, for example, on our globe, throw out their branches timidly, lest they break with their own weight. They carefully keep within the breaking