THE VISIBLE STARS. 



5.-,;, 



THE VISIBLE STARS. 



ON former occasions we have taken a survey of the group of inhabited globes 

 which, in company with the earth, revolve around the sun. We have examined 

 their motions and estimated their magnitudes and distances. Passing succes- 

 sively from planet to planet, the mind has been oppressed by the stupendous di- 

 mensions offered to its contemplation. Jupiter, a globe 1,400 times the bulk of 

 the earth, revolving at a distance of five hundred millions of miles from the sun ; 

 the Saturnian system, with its globe a thousand times larger than the earth its 

 system of revolving rings, and its suite of seven moons sweeping round the 

 sun in a vast orbit at a distance of a thousand millions of miles, and having a 

 year thirty times the length of ours, diversified by similar seasons, but varied 

 by seven different kinds of months ; and, finally, having attained the extreme 

 limit of the system, the planet Herschel is found, moving at such a distance 

 from the sun that that luminary is reduced to a star, with- moous too distant to 

 allow of their number being satisfactorily ascertained, and probably other illu- 

 minating apparatus, the discovery of which is reserved to future observers. 

 Such are the objects, such the distances, and such the motions, here presented 

 to us. But the aspirations of the inquisitive spirit of man rest not here con- 

 tented. Taking its station at this extreme verge of the system, and throwing 

 its searching glance toward the interminable realms of space which extend be- 

 yond those limits, it still asks What lies there ? Has the Infinite circumscribed 

 the exercise of his creative power within the precincts of the solar system 

 and has he left the unfathomable depths of space that stretch beyond it a wide 

 solitude ? Has He whose dwelling is immensity, and whose presence is every- 

 where and eternal, remained inactive throughout regions in the universe com- 

 pared with which the solar system itself shrinks into a point f 



Even though scientific research should have left us without definite informa- 

 tion 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 



