Abstract
The Spacious Firmament on high And all the blue aetherial sky And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great original proclaim. Th’ unwearied sun from day to day Doth his Creator’s power display And publishes to ev’ry land The work of an Almighty hand. What though in solemn silence all Move round the dark terrestrial ball; What though no real voice nor sound Mid all their radiant orbs be found: In reason’s ear they all rejoice And utter forth a glorious voice For ever singing as they shine ‘The hand that made us is Divine’. Despite its pre-Copernican cosmology, Addison’s well-known paraphrase of the nineteenth psalm perfectly expresses a whole religious world picture, the essence of that rational apologetic for Christianity which was evolved in England in the second half of the seventeenth century. For this school of thought the beauty, elegance and order of the universe were the chief evidences of the existence, wisdom and benevolence of God. Behind that serene conviction, however, lay a great unease. The world of law which Newton so wonderfully displayed to an admiring age was purchased at the cost of an increasingly remote deity.
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