A Sportsman 291 



space, are seen, by telescopes of the greatest power, 

 faint glimmerings of nebulas, which may yet be re- 

 solved by increasing powers into universes as immense 

 as ours, from which light moving with the velocity of 

 electricity, sufficiently rapid to circle our earth seven 

 times in a second, would require hvmdreds of years of 

 time to reach our world. And beyond those glimmer- 

 ing lights in endless space, What? We cannot affirm, 

 and we cannot deny. We cannot solve the mysteries 

 of nature; nor can we deny the Almighty power of 

 creation in extent. 



Light, which arrives in eight minutes through the 

 space of ninety-three millions of miles from the sun, and 

 an hour from the most distant planet of our solar 

 system, Neptune, which requires hundreds of years to 

 make its orbital journey around the sun, which our 

 earth completes in one, requires two or three years to 

 reach us from the nearest fixed star in the sky, and if we 

 could direct a new light from our earth or an electric 

 message into space, it could only, in a hundred millions 

 of years, have just commenced its journey through 

 endless space, upon a route which would be illimitable. 



How little we know of anything beyond our immedi- 

 ate reach! Of even our companion planets, or even 

 of the moon our satellite, but a few thousand miles 

 distant, whose features our scientists are not all agreed 

 upon, and yet in our conceit we detennine, without 

 logical evidence, the distinctiveness of intelligence, 

 reason, mind, and soul. We, the superior animals, 

 are progressng from the identical natural source 

 from which all living creatures have emanated 

 and progressed under the immutable laws of 

 nature. 



