stretching across the glittering sky. Each one of those little shining points is a great Sun, like our own Sun, giving light and warmth, doubtless, to numerous unseen worlds revolving round it; each, the centre of a solar system, filled with myriads of millions of inhabitants, human beings like ourselves, with thoughts, and feelings, and hopes, and joys,—husbands, wives, children, old grey-haired grandsires just stepping into their graves, and little nurslings but newly born into existence. And all these the great and good Creator is sustaining in life, and leading through life, and on to a yet higher and happier eternal life in heaven.
Try, now, to estimate the vastness of this universe; What, think you, is the distance of those stars? We must take for our instrument of measure, the speed of light:—nothing else will suffice, to give a conception of that distance. Light travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in one second of time, or nearly twelve millions of miles a minute. It occupies, consequently, about eight minutes and a half in coming from the sun to our earth, and about four hours in arriving at the farthest verge of our system, the planet Neptune. But how long does it take for light to come from one of those evening stars to us,—travelling at this enormous rate of 12,000,000 of miles a minute? It requires no less than ten years. So that the ray of light which falls upon our eyes as we look up, is ten years old; it set out from that star on its great journey across the abyss, not less than that number of years ago, and has just come in, as we lift our eyes. What a reflection is this![1]
- ↑ The famous Pole-Star is still farther off: light from that star is no less than thirty years on its journey to our earth.
