The Sun and Planet Saturn. 203 shallow atmosphere discovered by Young, extending three or four hundred miles above the photosphere. Sixth, the sierra, about eight or ten thousand miles. Seventh, the prominence region, extending to a height of thirty or forty thousand miles, with occasional extension to more than a hundred thousand miles. Eighth, the inner brighter corona, from two to three hundred thousand miles, expanding in places to four or five hundred thousand miles. Ninth, the outer radiated corona, jagged in outline and extending fully a million of miles from the visible glowing surface of the sun. All these envelopes are themselves multiple; and the outer corona is but the inner part of a solar envelope, or appendage, with outermost limits lying altogether out of ken. What a complex subject of research for our astronomers! The sun has almost a counterpart in the planet Saturn, whose splendid architecture displays the fashioning power of the great laws of the universe. The beauty of the system, marvellous gigantic rings, delicate varieties of colours in rings and in planet, the singular problems suggested by their magnificent size, fascinate the observer. If the vast belts are not cloud-masses formed by the sun, their real origin must be in some action of the planet's own mass. The heat of his surface causes currents of vapour to rise continually; on attaining the upper regions of his atmosphere, they condense in the form of a cloud. 'A similar peculiarity exists in the case of the sun. Indeed, a somewhat surprising resemblance exists between Saturn and the sun, as regards many important characteristics. The planet, like the sun, is of low specific gravity—very far lower than the earth's; as the sun has eight primary attendants, so Saturn has eight satellites; and as the sun has his attendant disc of minute bodies (seen in the Zodiacal light), so Saturn has his ring system, in all probability, of multitudes of minute satellites travelling in independent orbits around him. Is it not possible that the relation necessary to make the analogy complete may be actually fulfilled, and that Saturn is a source whence heat is supplied to the orbs which circle around him?"1 The analogy may be added to by a further fact-Jupiter, with his dark bands, seems now to be in the same state as was our earth. His cloudy shifting streaks; and the "Essays on Astronomy," p. 99: R. A. Proctor. appearance, at times, as of mountains or openings; may be inaugurating new days and nights in that far-off mighty planet. It is not necessary, for those who believe that all things are of God, to adopt any scientific theory as final. Mayer and Thomson maintained that the sun's heat, compared Iwith which the fiercest fire of a mass of white-hot iron is cold as ice, is sustained by the continual infall of cosmical bodies. Helmholtz supposed that gradual contraction of the solar orb is the mainspring of solar energies. Secchi believed that the fund of force lies in the union of the sun's own elements in chemical combinations. Sir John Herschel said, that mayhap the vital energies of monstrous creatures are the source of the luminary's might. The facts are so wonderful that even a sober explanation appears wild, discovered realities are more sublime than any fictions. The Sun's Rule. He draws to himself all cosmical matter and bodies that come under his exclusive influence, either by leaving the domain of some other star, or on account of his own motion through space. They do not all remain with him; but, after paying their respects, return to the sidereal depths to be attendants on other suns and stars, to perform functions in many worlds. Around him are millions of millions of bodies of varying velocities in different directions; clouds of cosmical atoms shifting and changing, aggregating here, segregating there; but, as a clustering solar appendage, permanent—an aureola of tremendous dimensions and startling magnificence. The meteors encountered by our earth every year are upwards of 2,700,000 visible to the naked eye; including shooting stars, only seen by telescopic aid, the hypothetical sum is 146,000,000,000. The space between the earth's orbit and the sun cannot be less rich; there must be an increasing aggregation of meteoric matter as the solar globe is approached. By the exercise of mighty attractive influence, he controls the force which would drive planets and meteors far out into space from the influence of his lighting, heating, actinic influence. So perfect his government, that the processes of slow change take place within limits, and the continual variations produce permanence in paths ever varying around him. He changes the eccentricity of our earth's orbit, causes the terrestrial equinoxes to circuit the ecliptic in The Sun's Rule. 205 their grand precession of 25,868 solar years; continents become oceans, and seas dry land; one hemisphere and then another supplies fruitful fields; activity follows rest, and rest activity; during many ages, the globe has been, and will continue to be, an abode of life and beauty. In one sense the sun's sphere of influence includes all space, but for practical purposes we regard it as limited and definite. His power is 315,000 times greater than the earth's. It might be supposed that a very vast increase of velocity is needed to change our periodic revolution; but if the earth's speed were raised from its actual rate, 182 to 19 miles the second, to about 25'7 miles the second, we should be carried thenceforth further and further from light and life. Still rotating, day and night still succeeding, the orderly sequence of the seasons would be displaced by continual diminution of light and heat; a cold more intense than that of the bitterest Arctic winter would bind all things in everlasting frost. So true is it, the lights in heaven are for signs and seasons, for seed-time and harvest, for summer and winter. The sun rules all the vapour of our atmosphere, lifting it up, then casting it down as rain or snow. The mechanical power of every river, the energy of the winds, the growth of trees and vegetables, the support of animal life, are from him. The blood in our veins-that oil of the lamp of life, the work of our muscles, the oxidation which supports the heart's action; without which it would be utterly consumed by its own action in eight days, prove that we are children of the sun. In tracing these powers to their source, we come to one power-the sun. He is the natural agent, and it is as easy for men to see the Providence of God in the natural ordering of the world, as in startling and miraculous occurrences. For many æons the sun and our earth were "a fluid haze of light;" then again, for other æons, our earth, like the sun, was a globe instinct with fiery heat in which no life could live after the manner of life now known. The potential germs of life might have been present in the midst of the fire, but only after periods infinite to our conception could life, such as we know it, or in the remotest degree like it, begin to exist. It is probable, however, from the fact that seeds, in order to germinate, must be placed in darkness-this being the case even with those plants which cannot flower and fruit until they receive the solar beams and power-that the living principle began to germinate ere solar beams shone with great light on the earth. The sun was hotter formerly than now, but the Zodiacal light and corona may have had particles, not luminous, which hindered the shining forth of great light. It may be that when the sun was giving forth most heat he was simultaneously raising the greatest amount of obstruction to the propagation of radiations from his surface. This throws light on the Divine Narrative. Grass, herb, tree, are representative words for all vegetation; and grass comprises that low order, called Cryptogams, or flowerless plants. The earliest may have been like those fungi which are found in mines, quarries, and gloomy or dark places. Herb and tree stand for that growth of flowering plants, including modern cereals, fruit and forest trees, which now adorn the earth; but probably did not exist until required for the nourishment of animal life. We may reasonably conclude that, lord of earthly life as is the sun, creative energy waited not for his manifestation on the fourth day; but that in the water and on the land, even before the sun's face was cleared from the battle and smoke of early cosmical struggles, life became rooted in the ground and floated in the waters; and when, with clear face, the monarch surveyed the earth, many other forms of life sprang up gladdened with his smile. The Sun's Path through Space. As knowledge and piety extend the horizon of view, the world enlarges to our contemplation; we travel beyond the sphere of sun, moon, earth, planets, and enter new firmaments to behold other suns and stars of greater and lesser splendour. The vast system, of which we are members, is hasting, with meteors, comets, satellites, asteroids, planets, sun, from the southern rich region of stars-the neighbourhood of Canis Major, Columba, and Lepus, to the northern rich region-where the chiefest splendour is gathered in Cygnus. We speed along a relatively barren path, from a rich past to a glorious future, at a rate of one hundred and fifty-four millions one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles the year. We circle a centre in the direction of Alcyone, a star of the Pleiades, of which Job (xxxviii. 31) said long ago-"Canst thou bind the sweet influence of The Garden of God. 207 Pleiades?" Round some central sun, or central void without any preponderate mass, or in a great vortex-ring, we move as parts in a scheme too wonderful and complicate to be as yet interpreted, and we complete the course in about eighteen million two hundred thousand years. As the earth and other planets are carried on, their orbits continually advance; the earth, beheld from the sun, is but a dust-mote in his beams; and her actual path, year by year, is through fresh space. Viewing the sun, as among other suns, and planetary orbits, as seen from fixed stars, those orbits are little more than a point, and the sun is invisible. What lines of gigantic boundary fix the order and place of every constellation! What unknown possibilities lie in that measureless extension of space where worlds are sprinkled as dust of gold for the display of intellectual and moral life! Our sun and his fellow-suns are connected with groups of minor and major suns, with clusters of star-dust, with masses of star-mist, with whorls and convolutions of nebulous matter, sometimes combined in vast spherical gatherings. Orbs lie in such brilliancy that we think close order is in those heavens; but, after stricter examination, they are found wide apart as the inconceivable distance that separates our sun from his nearest fellow. Further off, are stars whose rays take thousands, perhaps millions, of years to reach us. The arrangement is striking, and the possibility of it having sprung up by chance is so ridiculously small that Quetelet calculates it as nothing. There is a multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, and a countless succession of worlds in infinite time, with point or base of gravity regulated by the weight and motion of all. Great and glorious is the Garden of God. The suns are planted in flowering beds of many splendid colours. The planets interweave in sparkling germination, various foliage, blooming fecundity of borders. Dark suns, weird places, cavernous chaotic regions, shadow forth the desolation of eternal wintry fields. There are ridges and clusters, rows and shelvings, spirals and streams, in celestial depths where are signs of as yet unthought laws. "I shall maintain it all my life, whoever says in his heart there is no God, and makes use of a different language, is either a liar or a madman." 1 Scripture holds closely to mundane affairs, yet the ground 1 Rousseau, "Emilius," vol. ii. p. 230. |