THE GENESIS OF WORLDS. 75 



such conditions that it cannot be stored away in the motion of 

 the masses. It is then, probably for the first time, that heat 

 becomes a wave force and is radiated into space as light and 

 radiant heat not however lost, for that is impossible, but moving 

 ever onward and outward to the day and place of its final 

 reclamation. 



Our own solar system has already progressed far in this stage 

 of aggregation. All the planets and satellites have become 

 crusted over, and have ceased almost entirely to radiate heat. 

 But the sun, the great central body, the one which should last of 

 all become cold, is still in active combustion or chemical combi- 

 nation. Immense quantities of light and heat are still radiating 

 from its surface so immense that the little fraction which our 

 earth catches as it flies through space, gives us all the motion and 

 life and beauty which we enjoy. But the sun is not even now 

 the glowing orb that once it was, as the rock-records of our globe 

 testify. Its bright radiance is slowly but surely fading. Those 

 huge black incrustations, often twice as large as the whole surface 

 of the earth, that float awhile on its photosphere and then are 

 suddenly broken up, were not always there. And if they have 

 grown upon it, the uncomfortable conviction arises that they will 

 continue to grow and darken more and more its life-giving face. 

 Old age is certainly being written on the solar brow. It may 

 be millions of years hence for time is not one of the economies 

 of nature but the period will surely come when light and heat 

 will both have departed from the sun, as they once ceased to be 

 radiated from the earth and the planets and the numerous stars 

 that have gone out within the records of astronomy. A pall of 

 darkness w r ill gradually overspread the universe as one by one 

 the stars of the firmament shall fade away and sink into gloomy 

 lifeless sleep. A day in the grand calendar of creation has 

 passed, and a night has followed, cold and dark as the tomb of 

 expiring nature. 



But is there no awakening, no morrow to this night of the 

 universe ? Is the contest over, and never to be renewed ? For 

 answer, let us seek out in this case, as we did once before, the 

 condition and movements of the great contending forces. Those 



