SPACE BOUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 



Even though scientific research should have left us without 

 definite information on these questions, the light which has been 

 shed on the Divine character, as well by reason as by revelation, 

 would have filled us with the assurance that there is no part of 

 space, however remote, which must not teem with evidences of 

 exalted power, inexhaustible wisdom, and untiring goodness. 



But science has not so deserted us. It has, on the contrary, 

 supplied us with much interesting information respecting regions 

 of the universe, the extent of which is so great that even the 

 whole dimensions of the solar system supply no modulus suffici- 

 ently great to enable us to express their magnitude. 



It will not then be unprofitable or unpleasing on the present 

 occasion to extend our inquiries into those realms of space, which 

 stretch beyond the limits of our system, and to inquire into the 

 condition of the physical creation there. 



3. We are furnished with a variety of evidence, establishing 

 incontestably the fact, that around the solar system, to a vast 

 distance on every side, there exists an unoccupied space ; that the 

 solar system stands alone in the midst of a vast soli-tude. It has 

 been shown that the mutual gravitation of bodies placed in the 

 neighbourhood of each other is betrayed by its effects upon their 

 motions. If, therefore, there exist beyond the limits of the 

 solar system, and within a distance not so great as to render the 

 attraction of gravitation imperceptible, any mass of matter,, 

 such as another sun like our own, such a mass would un- 

 doubtedly exercise a disturbing force upon the various bodies 

 of the system. It would cause each of them to move in a 

 manner different from that in which it would have moved if no 

 such body existed. 



4. Thus it appears that, even though a mass of matter in our 

 neighbourhood should escape direct observation, its presence 

 would be inevitably betrayed by the effects which its gravitation 

 would produce upon the planets. No such effects, however, are 

 discoverable. The planets move as they would move if the solar 

 system were independent of any external disturbing attraction. 

 These motions are such, and such only, as can be accounted for by 

 the attraction of the sun and the reciprocral attraction of the other 

 bodies of the system. The inference from this is, that there does 

 not exist any mass of matter in the neighbourhood of the solar 

 system within any distance which permits such a mass to exercise 

 upon it any discoverable disturbing influence ; and that if any 

 body analogous to our sun exists in the universe, it must be placed 

 at a distance so great, that the whole magnitude of our system 

 will shrink into a point, compared with it. 



5. But we have other indications of this condition of things. 



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