STAR-GAZING. 169 



is the nearest of them. His next neighbour, Alpha 

 Centauri, is twenty millions of millions of miles 

 away ; while of the few which are near enough 

 to permit of their distances being calculated, some 

 are so far from us that their light, which darts 

 along at the rate of over one hundred and eighty 

 thousand miles in a second, requires fifty thousand 

 years to reach our earth. Of these remote worlds 

 some are known to be several thousand times larger 

 than our sun, and so numerous are they that twenty 

 millions of them are made visible by the telescope, 

 while there are besides vast clusters of systems too 

 distant to be separated into distinct points of light. 



" Awake, my soul, 



And meditate the wonder ! Countless suns 

 Blaze round thee, leading forth their countless worlds ! 

 Worlds in whose bosoms living things rejoice 

 And drink the bliss of being from the Fount 

 Of all-pervading Love. What mind can know, 

 What tongue can utter all their multitudes ? " 



How great is He Who metes out these heavens 

 with the span, and fills with His presence and His 

 power this illimitable realm ! that our thoughts 

 of Him could be as great ! 



Some, however, in meditating upon the vastness 

 of God's domain have feared that man might 

 seem so insignificant to Him as to be beneath 

 the reach of His love and care, and they have 

 repeated with tremulous doubt the old soliloquy : 

 " When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy 

 fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou 

 hast ordained ; what is man, that Thou art mind- 



