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assure them, will amply repay the labour bestowed upon it, and it will lead them 

 fully to endorse the sentiment of the poet, who bids us all to 



Look through Nature up to Nature's God. 

 And here, to commence my special subject, — ivlicre shall I begin? The mind ia 

 lost in the contemplation of the vastness of the subject ! It is not a question 

 of searching for "Vestiges of Creation." The "Footsteps" of Him, who made 

 all, meet us at every turn. In the height, and in the depth ; in the expanse of 

 the heavens above, as well as in the earth beneath, there is but one song, 

 one chorus j — a chorus, which first burst forth at that day, when, "the morning 

 stars sang together, and the Sons of God shouted for joy ;" — a chorus, still 

 echoed, and re-echoed through the vaults of sjiace, by the myriads of bright 

 orbs, scarcely reached by the most powerful telescopes, which, inconceivably 

 distant though they be, yet cast their light upon this small speck, our earth, 



For ever singing as they shine, 

 The Hand that made us is Divine. 



But a selection must be made : and so, amongst the many subjects demanding 



notice, I would fain draw your attention to two agents, both connected with 



the sun, andboth having an all important influence upon the earth. I allude 



to the solar rays : — the rays of light, and the rays of heat ; for they are not 



identical. 



The researches into the chemistry of Light and Heat of late years have 



been eminently successful. The wonders disclosed by the analysis of the solar 



beam have madeus acquainted, in some degree at least, with the nature of 



the Sun's atmosphere. In that atmosphere, or photosphere, are now proved 



to exist materials of which thisour earth consists ! In a gaseous or fluid 



condition float the elementary substances, which v/ould seem to be the simple 



materials first formed by God's creative act (to speak with all reverence), and 



which he has since employed in the construction and maintenance of the 



whole of the material creation. For, not only in the Sun's atmosphere are 



found these elements, but also in that of every Star that has been tested ; in 



that of every Nebula that has been subject to the power of this analyzing 



process ! Differing from each other in their material essence, as we are also told 



they do in a more spiritual and sublimer sense, "for one star differeth from 



another star in glory," yet in this they all agree, that, in infinite combinations 



indeed, but still preserving their identity and individuality, there are detected 



in all the same grandly simple elementary substances. 



Time wns, it may be, when such a congeries of gaseous masses filled the 

 whole space now occupied by the entire " enceinte" of our Solar System, even 

 far beyond the verge of Neptune's utmost circuit, and still further even, beyond 

 the "aphelion" i)oint of the most erratic of our sun's cometary attendants. 

 Heat and light were then in operation, as they are now : the laws of each, 

 then as now, doubtless, in action with never ceasing energy. The nebulous mass, 

 we may well believe from analogy, had its motion round an axis. Heat was 

 radiated from the outer surface, to reach limits far away into the boundless 



