ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
23 
height of the stars, have in the light of the astronomy of to- 
day. The star catalogue of Hipparchus contained a little over 
1,000 entries ; the great International Photographic Chart 
will show the images of more than 50,000,000 stars. There 
are photographs in existence showing upwards of 100,000 
stars on one single small plate ; and no one believes 
that we have reached the limit in any direction. 
So with their distances. By using the enormous base line of 
the diameter of the earth’s orbit — 186,000,000 of miles — we 
have been able to get a hint of the distances of some 40 or 
50 stars ; all the untold millions beside are, as yet, beyond our 
reach. 
And the nearest of these stars, where is it placed ? If we 
represent this vast globe on which we live by a single pin-point, 
a hundredth of an inch in diameter ; if we place an inch marble, 
9 feet away, to represent the sun, we then should have to 
travel to Liverpool before we should be able to indicate the 
place of our nearest neighbour amongst the stars. Nor 
have we come across any token of the end ; we can put no limit 
to the extent of the universe of stars. 
Has the progress of science rendered inappropriate or obsolete 
these two Scripture illustrations of limitless number and of 
limitless space ? Has it not rather furnished them with 
superlative justification ? 
I said early in my Address that in one sense the Bible had 
nothing to say respecting astronomy. I want to reverse that 
now. It has everything tc say that is of vital importance. I 
do not know how large Job, David and Isaiah conceived the 
sun to be ; they may possibly have thought it no more than 
80 feet across. Anaxagoras of Greece rose to a bolder conception, 
and suggested that it might be as big as the Peloponnesus — 
80 miles across. We now know that it is more than 800,000 
miles, and that it is only one out of many million suns, nor is it 
the largest of these ; it has been argued that Arcturus may 
be 80,000,000 of miles in diameter. 
Well, if so, if instead of being a fiery ball 80 feet across, the 
sun is really 800,000 miles or for the matter of that if it were 
80,000,000 of miles, what difference does it make to the funda- 
mental relation of man to the Creator on the one hand, and to 
the Creation on the other ? Now from one end of the Bible to 
the other, no matter when its different books were written, 
where, or by whom, there is no faltering nor uncertainty in the 
teaching which it gives on this absolutely fundamental point, 
God is the Maker and Creator of all things ; and Creation consists 
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