6 THE ORIGIN OP CREATION, 



which regulates our movements in a manner that the simplest 

 may understand ; and yet proved on our atomagnetic theory to be 

 governed according to natural law, which is infallible. Thus have 

 we done away with, it is hoped, forever, that superstition worthy 

 only of untutored minds, which imagines the sun to be a huge 

 furnace, feeding upon comets and shooting stars, and now and 

 then swallowing a planet to assuage its hunger. Thus have we 

 done away with the necessity of thinking so little of the 

 works of nature, and so much of ourselves, that a few planets 

 should monopolize a great furnace, which if it had them in pro- 

 per position could light and heat up all the starry hosts of hea- 

 ven. And thus, in conclusion, are turned into ridicule those 

 theoretic descriptions of a " Journey to the Sun " by a sensa- 

 tional philosopher, in which the voyagers impervious to heat 

 or cold after travelling far through " empty " space, at last 

 encounter flames of burning hydrogen thousands of miles long, 

 and see through the rifts of the raging fiery clouds, the red hot 

 nucleus of our luminarv within, 



