Scientific Lectures. 55 



do"um, beautifully and accurately, the position of tliose two stars, so 

 that they can afterward be measured. Oh ! what a beautiful instance 

 of the cooperation of the sciences in this our day ! One of the 

 beautiful featm-es of modern science is this harmonious cooperation 

 of one branch with the other, so that when an optician produces a 

 good telescope and analyzes a light, and then with his prism discerns 

 its colors, the chemist takes it into his laboratory and finds that he 

 can make out the composition of remote bodies by means of it ; and 

 the astronomer takes it back and asks the question of the different 

 bodies — the suns and stars— whether they are made of the same 

 matenal with things in the laboratory, and the answer comes back, 

 yes ! Iron, magnesium, and other materials, all have existed far, far 

 off, and so one branch of science incessantly cooperates with the 

 other. But I tire your patience. [Cries of " Go on."] [The lec- 

 turer here presented a diagram representing astronomical appearances 

 which resembled a revolving rocket.] When I came to investigate 

 these things in the year 1851, it struck me that here were enormous 

 flattened spheriods, which, by turning them too fast, had had the 

 material scattered after the fashion of a whirling rocket. When the 

 whole thing was more carefully examined, it seemed perfectly sup- 

 posable ; and when one curious form after another was explicable, 

 shall I tell you I almost held my breath, as I said, standing afar off 

 in awe and humility. Oh, may we thus discern the way of the great 

 Creator, far back in the eternal past. How long have thus been pro- 

 duced, by the rending and dispersing of useless masses, worlds that 

 produce life and light wherever they go ? On what a scale must 

 these things be carried on, when, in the rending and tearing, every 

 drop is a sun, and when those suns are kept out of each other's way, 

 and are scattered to bear their own planets (at least in our own case) 

 safely out of the reach of others ! But under circumstances like 

 these, how will you do without a Prescience and a Providence ? In 

 this great department of knowledge, as well as everywhere else and 

 always, a sound philosophy is wanted; and nothing else is wise 

 enough, powerful enough, enduring enough or good enough — nothing 

 else than the living God, the everlasting King of a very old-fashioned 

 Book. This is the great, the final hypothesis — a hypothesis broad as 

 the Universe which God sustains and pervades by His power, lasting 

 as the Eternity which He, the always Ancient One, inhabiteth ; and 

 an hypothesis in the light of which that justly accepted principle of 

 the uniformity of causation meets this sublime paraphrase. Science 

 is practicable, aye, Science exists because God is true. 



