rating beams of the sun,-are made partakers of its grateful influence, both of light and heat. These bodies are, all of them, "for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth," dispensing, with light, other genial and wholesome influence. "In them," that is, "the heavens," hath "he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

These lights are termed the greater light, the lesser light, and the stars. The greater light, which, as we have seen, is the sun, governs the day: it enlightens, and it invigorates. The sun is the greater light the magnitude of this body is immense: many conjectures have been formed as to its actual size; but, it is utterly impossible that correctness should rest in any of them; yet, we may have some conception of the wonderfulness of it, some idea of the power of Him who produced it, when we learn that its diameter has been estimated at upwards of eight hundred thousand miles. That which is termed the lesser light, the moon, gives too a certain quantity of light, and what is sufficient, in necessary degree, to dissipate the extreme darkness of night. It is placed next in order to the sun, in the enumeration,

new;" one half of it appertaining to the old month, the other half to the new; and to avoid the fraction, they counted the moiety alternately, twenty-nine and thirty days.-ID.

.F

not because it is the next in magnitude, for, of the planets it is one of the smallest, but, because, in the absence of the sun, or more properly to speak, as the earth turns round the sun, and the sun is stationary, when the earth is at its greater distance from the sun it reflects its beams, so giving us, though a borrowed light, as in reality it is, a greater light than we derive from any other of the heavenly bodies, with the exception of the sun: it is, therefore, very truly said to govern the night; for, without it, the night would be one continued and impenetrable darkness. "Of the actual substance of the sun, so little satisfactory yet to our judgment has been discovered, that all which is mentioned concerning it, can rank no higher than to conjectures of scientific imagination more or less plausible. The comparative masses of its spacious substance, and of the other planets, have been calculated. Dr. Herschel thought its body to be opaque, with an upper stratum of self-luminous clouds. Black spots of varying magnitude and form are continually appearing upon it, and receding; and have led astronomers to discover that the sun has a rotation round its own axis, which it performs in about twenty-five days and a half. These spots are almost always comprised in a particular zone of its surface. His diameter has been estimated to 886, 149 miles. From the faint zodaical light, which at times accompanies it, an atmosphere has been ascribed to it, but so thin that stars are visible through it. The variety of seasons which it was appointed to produce, is caused by the inclination of the ecliptic to the

equator. The substance of the moon is more known to us than that of the brighter luminary. Its volume is forty-nine times less than the volume of the earth. There is ground for supposing that all is solid at its surface, for it appears, in powerful telescopes, as an arid mass, on which some have thought they could perceive the effects, and even the explosions of volcanoes. There are mountains, which rise to the height of nearly two miles; and it has been inferred that it has deep cavities, like the basins of our seas. Caspian lakes have been supposed in it. But it has either no atmosphere, or it is of such extreme rarity, as to exceed the nearest vacuum we can produce by our best constructed air pumps; so that no terrestrial animal could breathe alive upon its surface. It has a great number of invariable spots, which prove that the moon always presents to us the same hemisphere, and revolves on its axis in a period equal to that of its revolution round the earth. Its dark and bright parts have given rise to the idea, that it has seas, islands, and continents; but it is now doubted whether it has any water at all; and it has been supposed that if it had any oceans, the superior attraction of the earth, especially when in conjunction with the sun, would draw the aqueous fluid into a deluge over a large part of its surface. The light of the full moon is at least 300,000 times more feeble than that of the sun. From this inferiority, the lunar rays, when collected in the most powerful mirrors, produce no sensible effect on the thermometer. Indeed they seem to have a cold-producing agency,

They

according to the experience of practical men, though philosophers have not yet ascertained the fact by their direct experiments'." The stars God likewise made. These comprise the rest of the heavenly bodies; which, although in appearance to us less glorious and important, are yet of high benefit. They give or reflect light; their beneficial influence is largely experienced by the earth; and they greatly serve to the division of times and of seasons. are marvellous bodies; they are vast in size; countless in number; and almost infinite in distance. From the little which human industry and skill have been hitherto able to discover as regarding them, we know enough to strike us with astonishment and awe. Their "primitive fluidity is clearly indicated by the compression of their figure, conformably to the laws of the mutual attraction of the molecules. It is also demonstrated by the regular diminution of gravity, as we proceed from the equator to the poles. This state of primitive fluidity, to which we are conducted by astronomical phenomena, is also apparent from those which natural history points out. Such is the deliberate judgment of La Place. Sir Isaac Newton had also, a century before, asserted the primeval fluidity of our globe. It is thus that Moses first displays it to our view, a moving, liquid, unformed mass. In this state, under the additional action of light, it began its wonderful rotation, and became the regular composition of which it now consists.

1 Turner's Sacred History.

One of the grandest circumstances to which the contemplation of the heavenly bodies that form our system attaches the attention, is the surprising distances at which they are placed, and the stupendous amount of space which they occupy by their circuits. Our earth is above ninety millions of miles from the sun; Saturn is above eight hundred and more millions further off; and the next and most remote that we know, which is connected with us, the Uranus, is twice that mighty distance. The fact is sublime and vast, beyond the power of our words to express, or of our ideas to conceive. This last planet of our system rolls in an elliptical orbit, almost circular, of which 1788 millions of miles are the diameter, and therefore circumscribes an area of 5000 millions of miles. Our system occupies this amazing portion of space; and yet, is but one small compartment of the indescribable universe. Immense as is an area of 5000 millions of miles, yet it is but a very little section of the incomprehensible whole. Above 100,000 stars, apparently suns like ours, shine above us; and to each of these, that analogy would lead us to assign a similar appropriation of space; but of such a marvellous expansion of extent and being, although visibly real, from the existence of the lucid orbs that testify its certainty to us, the mind, with all its efforts, can form no distinct idea. Thought lapses into nothingness, whenever it attempts to do so; and yet, astonishing as this is, it becomes more wonderful, from the fact that the distance is so immense from us, before those other myriads begin, that no fixed star can be made to give