30 



fresh evidence of an all-pervading harmony amid its countless 

 members. In coniident reliance on the orderly movements of 

 the planets, Leverrier and Adams independently wrought out 

 results by means of which the telescope of the observer was 

 pointed to the unheeded speck, invisible to the naked eye ; and 

 the planet Neptune was added as a new member of our solar 

 system. The science of Chemistry, too, unexpectedly directing 

 its operations to a sphere which had hitherto seemed to lie 

 wholly beyond its province, by means of spectrum analysis 

 brings back to us the reassuring disclosure that, amid endless 

 diversities in their combinations, the remotest of those suns 

 that light up the firmament are fashioned of the same elements 

 as this little planet-home of man. Such are some of the teach- 

 ings of science. But even the untutored eye sees enough in that 

 mysterious vault that nightly spans for him life's fleeting hour, 

 lit up with the splendor of its myriad suns, and the star-strewn 

 milky- way, to realize that no errata need be appended to the 

 volume of nature. It may be that every star is the centre of 

 a system of worlds, the abode of intelligences more gifted 

 than we are to interpret the wondrous volume ; but this at 

 least we do know that they shine for us, lighted up from the 

 same source which enkindles the central luminary of our own 

 little group of planets ; stirs our earth in its winter's sleep ; 

 quickens the buried seed, and the dormant animal life ; and 

 is but another aspect of that force which moves the worlds. 



Thus we recognize the indices of an all-pervading harmony, 

 disclosing to every eye evidence of rule, of law, and so of the 

 Divine law-giver, alike in the orderly movements of suns and 

 planets, and in the mysterious wanderings of the comet that 

 blazes in the splendor of its perihelion and then returns in 

 darkness to unknown depths of space. This is for us a living 

 present. But, so also, in another chapter of the volume of 



