Life in a Thousand Worlds | Page 4

endowments. The air, earth and water are teeming with their billions of sensitive creatures; even a breath of air, a drop of water, or a leaf on a tree often contains a miniature world of living forms.
Amidst all this confusing animation around us, is it not absurd to suppose that other worlds, larger or smaller than our own, are barren of all life, and that from them no songs of thanksgiving ever arise to the Maker and Ruler of all things?
Such a supposition not only gives us a strange view of the character and attributes of God, but is at once repulsive to our instincts; anyone wishing to accept it may do so, but as for me and for a large company of my kind, we prefer to give a larger meaning to creation and a higher glory to the Creator.
Let no one doubt that the universe is full of intelligent life, in myriad types of existence and infinite stages of development. Physically speaking, one cannot imagine the countless variety of ways in which flesh and bone may congregate around the human brain to make a sentient and intelligent creature.
Confined as we are to our little dark world, we know by sight of only one way in which the brain conveys its messages and serves its ends, namely, through a body of one hundred pounds or more of flesh and bone, formed erect, and capable of rendering service upon a moment's notice. Therefore some of us are conceited enough to believe that we are the most perfect and beautiful beings of the universe, the highest expression of creative art, and that all other creatures in a million orbs take a secondary place.
True enough, we occupy an honored position in the scale of creation, but while the people of many worlds are beneath us, yet there are many more planets whereon human genius has surpassed us, and we must be modest enough to take our rightful place in the drama of the worlds.
"How many planets, how many suns, how many milky ways are there?" you ask in one breath. Speaking alone of our own universe, of which the Milky Way is the backbone, I estimate that if we multiply the number of stars by forty-nine, we shall have the approximate number of worlds that are large enough to be classed with the family of inhabited planets.
In our immediate universe there are at least one hundred million stars, a number of which have over five hundred worlds revolving around them; others have only six or ten. The average, as above stated, is estimated at forty-nine. Then, also, far out in the depths of space, there are nebulous spots visible only through the most searching lenses. These are new systems of milky ways or new universes, so immensely distant that our most powerful telescopes cannot even resolve them into stars.
There are inhabited worlds so far from us that, if one could travel the distance around our Earth in one second, he could proceed in one direction, at this rate of speed, for twenty million years and yet see far ahead of him the flickering lights of numberless other inviting suns and worlds.
We cannot possibly grasp an idea of such infinite distances, neither can we form any adequate conception of the long, long stretches between star and star, which is the same as saying, between solar system and solar system. In our Milky Way the stars seem to be crushed together into a whitish jelly, but the awful truth looms up before us with all sublimity that, although these stars seem to lie one upon another, they are millions and trillions of miles apart.
In regard to our own solar system much speculation is rife as to the existence of human creatures on the several larger planets. Theories of all kinds have been advanced; some speculative or absurd, others so plausible as to give rise to interesting questions, such as communicating with Mars, and perhaps of taking a journey to the Moon. These suggestions, while fanciful, awaken our interest and excite our curiosity. Can any one predict the excitement that would prevail in our world if a human creature from some other planet were suddenly to set foot upon our soil? We would fling a thousand questions at him to learn something of the strange realm from which he came.
And how great would be our amazement if we were to have the exalted privilege of journeying to other worlds, seeing the types of human creatures living there, and witnessing a thousand other things too strange and wonderful to mention?
I invite you to listen as I tell a condensed story of a number of worlds which I have visited, all within the boundary line of our own universe. I cannot even tell a tithe of what