Year: 1876

Our knowledge of the orb of day is


yet but superficial. Spots have been


discovered upon its surface, but no


one knows whether they are riffs in
its gaseous atmosphere, showing the


main body beneath, or the product of


awful storms and whirlwinds. The
spectroscope has detected traces of
some known minerals in the rays of
the sun, but that is only of indirect
value. Powerful instruments and
acute. observations have given to the
world nothing but what lies upon the
surface, and everything that science
has really demonstrated can be put in
a paragraph.


The sun is $4,000 miles in diane
ter, and it would take about 100000
worlds like our own to make up the
bulk. 1t has, so far as we can learn,
surrounding envelope Of fiery gases
$4,000 miles in thickness, but there is
no definite information of what lies
beneath. Certainly if there is fiery
envelope Of that size, nothing solid, of
a material character, can maintain it
self within, and no life could be predi-
Gated as existing. And, according to
some astronomers, there are appear
anccs which in other spheres would
indicate volcanic action, tongues of
fame darting upward $4,000 miles,
and luminous matter often elected
100000 miles. A sublime and mag
nifcent globe, truly, but whence came
it and what supports it? If the sun
is ball of fire requiring a constant
supply of fuel, where does that supply
come from? Sir John Herschel states
that it would require the combustion
of 130,0O pounds of coal per hour
on each square foot of the suns sur
face to produce the amount of heat
constantly radiated, a total for the
whole which no figures could definite
ly present to the mind. Prof. Mitch
ell acknowledges that science has CIV
en- no satisfactory account of the ori-
gin of solar light and heat Some as
tronomers think that the sun is con-
stantly attracting to itself millions of
wandering stars and floating nebule,
stray masses of solid substance which
fall into its fiery embrace and die that
stable worlds like ours may live.
Such theories, are, however, little
better than wild conjectures. This
luminous orb, the parent, as science
has almost proven, of all the other
orbs that come within its influence
and belong to its system, has existed
an unknown and certainly very long
period, and to make it dependent up
on daily supply of material would
not only render its light and heat
variable, but would expose it to the
possible catastrophe OF sudden ex-
tinction. The mind that created the
sun, we may be sure, left nothing TO
chance, and we know we'll that the
sun that shone last week was quite
up to the malk of the luminary that
first rose upon a created world.


A philosopher who lived mure than
a century ago attempted to solve the
mystery of the sun, but he did it after
a fashion so metaphysical that he OBJ
tanned but few adherents, and even
his name is now but rarely mentioned :
among scientists. He asserted that
the sun is pure fire, by which he
means that it is in itself self-sustaIn-
ing. and needs no extraneous help tor
1t is, according to him,
the nearest visible representative OF
what lies beyond in the spiritual
world, and corresponds to that Divine
love which warns the heart, and that
Divine Wisdom which eliminates the
understanding. From this be extract
ed many ingenious and fanciful theo-
ries, which we have not room to
dwell upon, and watch are not peril
nent to our subject. The question IS
still an open one. the sun is still an


pA.hn ~. Il L.