ASTRONOMY AS A SCIENCE. THE SUN. 115 



science. Certain of the most striking discoveries of 

 the elder Herschel such as the motion of the sun and 

 its planets in space, and the results derived from his 

 method of gauging the heavens were for a time 

 doubtfully received even by astronomers themselves. 



At that period, indeed, the science had gone little 

 beyond the confines of the solar system in any scheme 

 of exact research. We had a partial nomenclature of 

 stars, and a knowledge of relative brightness and posi- 

 tion, the latter facts often expressed by whimsical 

 analogies drawn from a distant and credulous age. 

 The true sidereal astronomy is of recent date, and owes 

 much of its wonderful achievements to the increased 

 power and perfection of the instruments employed. 

 It has now bridged over the interspace between our 

 own and other systems of worlds, and shown by sure 

 arguments from evidence that there is no actual gap in 

 the series that some at least of the forces and ele- 

 ments in the worlds thus remote in the universe are 

 identical with those which give movement, order, and 

 life to the globe we inhabit and that we may safely 

 affirm unity of cause, if not unity of laws, as regards 

 the whole. In this conclusion of the unity of crea- 

 tion, and therefore of the Creative Power, we have 

 the strongest argument which astronomy ministers 

 to natural theology. 



But there is another proof, though less direct, to 

 be drawn from this source. Notwithstanding the 

 ignorance of the mass of mankind of the objects and 

 attainments of astronomy, the science itself is that 

 which best shows the intellectual capacities of man in 



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