12 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



abyss is akin to entering into a vast cathedral and reading in 

 some far a-way crypt a new manuscript traced by God's own 

 finger in brilliant letters to reveal to the travelling sons of 

 men the methods of His creative power and to exhibit fresh 

 proofs of His most holy and lofty attributes. 



To an expert mathematician the investigation of astron- 

 omical worlds is a very paradise. To a popular audience a 

 mathematical treatment of this subject would be most forbidding ; 

 but if we consider the subject, not so much in its profound and 

 recondite details as in the results to which it attains, the magni- 

 tvide and importance of the subjects it treats of, and the beauty 

 and grandeur of the phenomena it investigates, we shall have 

 to acknowledge that some time or other in the ponderous times 

 of astronomical science there must lie buried embodiments of 

 interest which need no enchantress to arouse them to life, and 

 which, having burst their cerements, became clothed with beauty 

 and glow with life. The science which projects itself through 

 the illimitable fields of space seizes with its wonderful analysis 

 a system of revolving worlds mutually operating on each other, 

 measures their magnitudes, weighs their masses, declares their 

 distances, calculates their motions and tabulates their positions 

 at the close of a thousand revolutions yet to come ; the science 

 which grasps the orb by the beam of light which left it ten 

 thousand years ago and traces its movement; the science which 

 ^vith reverent eye gazes into the very counsels of the eternal 

 and with devout finger writes down His creative methods ; such 

 a science cannot fail to interest, to enchant, to arouse. Do we 

 want poetry ? It is here written on the sable skirts of the night 

 in letters that have never faded since "the beginning" and will 

 form an eternal blazon till time shall be no more. Do we want 

 architecture? We have it, but it is the column and the archit- 

 rave bound together with the adamantine grasp of gravitation 

 and crowned with starry clusters. Do we want eloquence? 

 We have it, bvit it is the heavens that declare the glory of God 

 — day unto day uttereth speech and the resistless sweep of their 

 praise ceaseth not. Do we want music? We have it, but it is 

 the chorus of morning stars that sing together. Do we want 



