52 Transactions of the American Institute. 



in the way of intensity. What, then, shall we say of bodies that give 

 us the light of 100 suns at once ? What shall we call them ? But, 

 if you will not insist upon a new name, then, indeed, the stars are 

 suns, and the analysis of the spectroscope brings to light new phe- 

 nomena which insist again that stars are suns. But, what a simple 

 declaration ! Four words are enough to describe it, but, oh, what does 

 it mean ? It means that the tiny ray which gladdens our eye, as shot 

 from some twinkling star, it trembles in the casement, is a miniature 

 sunbeam ; and the faint and feeble glow which sometimes, like a tiny 

 transparent veil, covers the fair face of nature, is itself woven of the 

 iscattered glory of thousands of suns. And yet it is only starlight after 

 all ! How awful must be their distance ! Some of these bodies are so 

 remote that the light which left them started before the human race 

 began, before God in sublime self-counsel said : " Let us make man, 

 and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life," and man became a 

 living soul. Oh ! long before that came the light which is scrutinized 

 by the telescope of to-day from some of those bodies, and I am seeing 

 it as actually as I see your faces. Oh ! what a little bit of the record 

 of past eternity is unrolled to be read in time. If this be so, what 

 would happen if we could look from the other end ? Could we be 

 away back there and look down here we might see, if we had suffi- 

 cient power and skill, a visible record of much, or very much of all 

 that has taken place here. How interesting to think that the visible 

 record of what took place in old geological times, flying far up, has 

 not yet quite reached the sun regions, even with the ftill velocity of 

 light, may yet be read. The author of a little work called " The Stars 

 and the Earth " has brought out that idea very beautifully, and car- 

 ried it just as far as it will bear ; and it is all beautifully presented. 

 But not a bit of it, when he takes a single step further and says : 

 " Thus we may get some idea of the might of the Divine Omnisci- 

 ence." Poor man ! Such a fact give an idea of the Divine Omnis- 

 cience ! Is not the fact immensely more infinite than any mere visible 

 indication of it ? And does it give the first blush of an idea of the 

 enormous penetrating omniscience which extends down to the roots 

 of character, away down in the mind of the man, and knows what he 

 is going to do, what he is going to think, and extends far oif, and is 

 acquainted with all our ways. Oh, no ; it does not give the first 

 blush of an idea. Now I come to notice another interesting matter 

 in regard to the fixed stars. They occur in pairs all through the 

 heavens, two and two. Now it sometimes happens, and it might 

 Tery reasonably, indeed, that one is right behind the other. But if 



