422 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



in regard to the distance of the sun from, the earth, or the 

 velocity of light, and yet the nearest of the fixed stars is so 

 remote that its light has consumed ten years in passing to 

 our earth ; and there are visible stars so distant that their 

 light has occupied the lifetime of our race in darting over 

 the measureless void. In each second of that interval it 

 has traveled a distance measured by seven times the cir- 

 cumference of the earth. Nay, I may gaze through the 

 telescope on any star-lit night, and gather into my eye 

 rays which set out from a distant nebula ages before even 

 the race was called into being whose slowly-developing 

 science has enabled me to make these calculations and 

 gather up this feeble light. 



These are values which the positive science of astronomy 

 affords us. Nor are the wonders of physics less overwhelm- 

 ing. The amount of heat sent off from the sun in one min- 

 ute is, according to Mayer, 12,650 millions of "cubic miles 

 of heat." Now what is a cubic mile of heat? In the con- 

 ventional language of the physicists, it is the quantity of 

 heat necessary to raise the temperature of a cubic mile of 

 water one degree Centigrade. Have we any conception of 

 the amount of heat required to do this work ? In order to 

 subdivide the quantity till we reach a limit which our in- 

 tellects can grasp, let me state that one cubic mile of heat 

 contains 408 billions of units of heat; and a unit of heat is 

 the quantity of heat required to raise one kilogramme — or 

 about one quart — of water one Centigrade degree, which is 

 one and four fifths degree of our scale. In other words, 

 then, the sun emits more than five septillions, or five thou- 

 sand millions of millions of units of heat every minute. In 

 a year the amount is 522,000 times as great; and in the brief 

 duration of our race it has been more than three thousand 

 million times seven septillions of units of heat. These, let 

 the reader remember, are the data of exact science. They 



