Wesley Corpus

Thy frame but dust, thy stature but a span, A moment thy duration, foolish man! "What is man" I would consider this, First, with regard to his magnitude; and, Secondly, with regard to his duration. I. 1. Consider we, First, What is man, with regard to his magnitude And, in this respect, what is any one individual, compared to all the inhabitants of Great Britain He shrinks into nothing in the comparison. How inconceivably little is one compared to eight or ten millions of people! Is he not Lost like a drop in the unbounded main 2. But what are all the inhabitants of Great Britain, compared to all the inhabitants of the earth These have frequently been supposed to amount to about four hundred millions. But will this computation be allowed to be just, by those who maintain China alone to contain fifty-eight millions If it be true, that this one empire contains little less than sixty millions, we may easily suppose that the inhabitants of the whole terraqueous globe amount to four thousand millions of inhabitants, rather than four hundred. And what is any single individual, in comparison of this number 3. But what is the magnitude of the earth itself, compared to that of the solar system Including, beside that vast body, the sun, so immensely larger that the earth, the whole train of primary and secondary planets; several of which (I mean, of the secondary planets, suppose that satellites or moons of Jupiter and Saturn) are abundantly larger than the whole earth 4. And yet, what is the whole quantity of matter contained in the sun, and all those primary and secondary planets, with all the spaces comprised in the solar system, in comparison of that which is pervaded by those amazing bodies, the comets Who but the Creator himself can "tell the number of these, and call them all by their names" Yet what is even the orbit of a comet, and the space contained therein, to the space which is occupied by the fixed stars; which are at so immense a distance from the earth, that they appear, when they are viewed through the largest telescope, just as they do to the naked eye