20 UNITY OF THE CREATIVE POYVER. 



Nor does the argument for Unity, derived from 

 light, stop here. Recent researches have disclosed in 

 the spectra of several of the fixed stars certain lines, 

 exactly corresponding with lines in the solar spectrum. 

 The latter, by an admirable series of experiments and 

 deductions, has already shown the existence in. the sun 

 of various elements, chiefly metals, familiar on our own 

 globe a discovery which ratified at once the boldest 

 assumptions of hypothesis. Conjectures, invited to the 

 question by the analysis of aerolites, and by other con- 

 siderations, have now been realised, not for our solar 

 system only, but for worlds and systems so remote in 

 space that their light takes years to reach our globe. 

 Waves of light which quitted the surface of Sirius thus 

 long before make known to the human enquirer the 

 identity of certain material elements there with those 

 familiar to him by every day's sight and use on the 

 earth. Other stars, similarly examined through the 

 identity of these spectrum lines, extend the same pre- 

 sumption to other parts of sidereal space ; while light 

 itself, in disclosing thus far the sameness of material 

 out of which those vast works of creation have been 

 elaborated, declares its own identity throughout the 

 universe, as their exponent and interpreter. Taking 

 the whole together, it is an argument for the unity of 

 creation more perfect and more profound than seemed 

 within the power of man to attain. 



Light, then, the fountain of all our knowledge of 

 the universe without, might alone almost suffice in 

 demonstration of the truth we seek for. But the me- 

 chanism of the heavens also, as it comes interpreted 



