132 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



therefore, no danger signal ahead of us from one of tlie stars that 

 shine above us for a good man}' years at least, and the chances are 

 that if we do get near to one of them 80,000 years hence the 

 mutual laws of attraction and repulsion will avert a celestial 

 catastrophe. 



Now we know the rate we are travelling at, it becomes an in- 

 teresting question to find out where we are bound for. This point 

 has also been settled by astronomers. The sun and all his family- 

 are travelling to a spot in the sky situated in the constellation of 

 the Harp, and close to that first magnitude star named Vega. Un- 

 fortunately this line is not double-tracked, and it is along this very- 

 road that the real danger exists. Not indeed by coming in contact 

 with any of the well-known fixed stars, as they are called, but by 

 a hidden star, in fact a dead star, the ver}' existence of which we 

 cannot ascertain until it is too late to avert the awful calamity 

 which is sure to befall this old world of ours sooner or later. 



A noted astronomer, J. Ellard Gore, has calculated if this 

 approaching dark body had the same mass as our sun, its first ap- 

 pearance would be heralded as a star of the ninth magnitude when 

 at a distance of 15,000 millions of miles from the sun. If the dark 

 body were moving towards us at the same rate the sun is moving 

 in space, it would take just a trifle over 15 years from its appear- 

 ance, before colliding- with tlie sun. The effect of such a collision 

 would reduce the two bodies into a gaseous state within an hour, 

 and enough heat would be produced to burn up the earth and 

 probably most of the planets of the solar system. 



The great Bishop Butler, of "Butler's Analogy" fame, says 

 that^analogy is the law of life, and we might add witli- equal truth 

 that it is also the law of death. Let me recall to your minds 

 Tennyson's words in this connection, for altough he was only a 

 poet, yet he was always scientific. He says : 



" The old earth had a birth. 

 As all men know, long ago. 

 And the old earth must die ; 

 For all things must die." 



