STAR-GAZING. 163 



the horrid fear that because no man knows where 

 heaven is, there may be no heaven at all. that 

 the heart of the little child might be ever in us ! 

 Then should we not need to go so far away as the 

 stars to seek for heaven, but it would be the nearest 

 thing of all, shining in our very soul, and making 

 it the abode of God. 



The stars fulfil many important services for man. 

 We dare not say they were created wholly for his 

 sake, though some of the heavenly luminaries we 

 know were ordained " for signs and for seasons, and 

 for days and years." They may, for all we know, 

 be the abodes of other creatures, or perhaps they 

 are embryo worlds in which are to dwell races of 

 beings high in the scale of existence. But, however 

 this may be, they certainly exert a mighty influence 

 upon human activities and thought. 



It is by means of their majestic motions that our 

 chronometers are set, and their transitions and 

 occupations help to make our commerce easy and 

 secure. They light up the path of the benighted 

 traveller with their commingled rays, and chase 

 away his loneliness by inspiring the consciousness 

 that God is near. They appeal to the finer faculties 

 of the human intellect, and supply a thousand 

 fascinating problems for noble thought. Who .can 

 describe the undefinable feeling of elevation and 

 content that swells up in the breast when in some 

 blest hour we stand under the calm, silent sky,~with 

 all the fever of earthly life and human passion 

 lulled to quiet as if the soul had escaped for a while 

 to heaven ? It is worth something in this distract- 



