For many years astronomers who could not conceive of life existing only on one insignificant body like the earth, in a universe so immense that it surpassed all comprehension, developed a passion for peopling the far distant and much greater heavenly bodies or systems, which they observed and studied by means of the telescope and spectroscope. Many took it for granted that man must be a very insignificant creature in a universe of countless worlds possibly peopled with beings quite superior to themselves.

It is not hard to realize how ,this trend of scientific thought and theory, emphasized by popular presentation to the lay mind, tended to belittle, to make of almost no consequence, man and his dwelling-place, and so to take away the meaning and importance of the revelation of God on such an insignificant clod of earth. It tended to minimize, or make religious myth, out of the meaning of Christ having come to it, of His cross which stood in it, and of the redemption taught in connection with it. For must it not be beyond all reason to suppose that God, if such there be, the Creator of such a stupendous universe, should stoop to be mindful of such a worm of the dust living on a dusty speck, one of the smaller in the group of a small solar system set in a universe of billions of suns? By such wisdom men are lured out upon the sea of forgetfulness as to what they are, who they are, and whither they go; they are led into the morass of denial respecting human responsibility to God on the strength of supposed comparative insignificance in the universe; a step beyond lie the marshlands of agnosticism and atheism, and beyond-what? Nonentity; life flickers out here to its eternal end.

But it is rather startling after years of such instruction from the scientifically great of the past century to be told by acknowledged scientific leaders of today that more than likely man "is the only rational creature in the cosmos after all"; that in recent years astronomers have come to feel "that there is little evidence that other systems of planets like the solar system exist." Truly, "it is only a step from this to the belief that even if such planets exist, ours is the only one capable of sustaining high forms of life."

Discoveries of recent years made it necessary to give up the idea that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and their satellites could be inhabited; then Mercury fell under the ban; Mars and Venus remained as rivals of the earth, but these too are losing their claims to be considered habitable. The noted astronomer Jeans, and his followers, now think that though there are billions of suns, none of them have attendant planets suitable for habitation as is the earth.

All of this serves on the one hand to show the transitoriness of man's thoughts, the rise and fall of his many theories, as the centuries roll along; but one takes note of these changing views because they may serve to emphasize the truth of God's revelation, centering as that does around man and the earth on which he has been placed by his Creator.

The Word of God sets man in the first place in all the creation below the rank of spirit-beings. From present day conclusions there appears no evidence that such a race as ours could exist on any other planet, and though there are other orders of being in God's universe, the orbit of Divine revelation revolves around that one race now living on earth, though Scripture distinctly informs us that Revelation is now known to and studied by spirit-beings. Scripture speaks of Adam as the first man. There were not men before him, and, the scientists being witness, no race of men could live elsewhere but on this earth. There is only One who is called the Second Man-the Man Christ Jesus. With the first man came the fall and the ruin of the race. With the Second Man came the full accomplishment of that which meets every issue raised by the presence of sin in God's universe, and the formation of a new race of men made up of those brought out of the ruin of the first to be a new creation in Christ Jesus. Blessed and glorious triumph of the power and wisdom of God manifested through Christ crucified on this earth, and reaching as to its effect every created intelligence in whatever way suited to His eternal glory.