sions rapidly becoming reduced, till I was no larger than they were; I found myself drawn down to the surface of the tiny globe on which they lived-in fact, I found myself one among them, and that all I had intended to say to them they might with equal truth say to me. And then I perceived that the small globe was the earth on which I lived, and the great fire-globe was the sun, while the other orbs I had visited were the planets and their satellites. And when I considered that I had learned nothing about them which I had not known before, I was so troubled that I awoke-and lo, it was a dream. Yet was the dream not without its lesson, and its lesson was this :—

'Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. Who knoweth not that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights. Praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars of light; praise Him, ye heavens of heavens.'

THE SUN.

I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous. . . marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty.-REV. xv. 1, 3.

Great and

IN long past ages there were nations that worshipped the sun. He was their God; he seemed to them as a being of might, 'rejoicing as a giant to run his course,' and capable not only of influencing the fortunes of men and nations, but of hearkening and responding to their prayers. A vain thought truly, for the creature was worshipped and the Creator forgotten. And yet of all the forms of religion in which created things were worshipped sun-worship was the least contemptible. Indeed, if there is any object which men can properly take as an emblem of the power and goodness of Almighty God, it is the sun.

The sun is an emblem of the Almighty in being the source whence all that lives upon the earth derives support. Our very existence depends on the beneficent supply of light and heat poured out continually upon the earth by the great central orb of the planetary scheme. Let the sun forget to shine for a single day, and it would be with us even as though God had forgotten our existence, or had remembered us only to punish; myriads of creatures

now living on the earth would perish, uncounted millions would suffer fearfully. But let the sun's rays cease to be poured out for four or five days, and every living creature on the earth would be destroyed. Or, on the other hand, even a worse (or at least more sudden and terrible) fate would befall us if an angel of wrath 'poured out his vial upon the sun, and power were given unto it to scorch men

with fire.'

Yet again, the sun is an emblem of the Almighty in the manner in which he bestows benefits upon us and is forgotten. Day after day we enjoy the sun's light and heat; clouds may conceal him from our view, much as troubles may cause us to forget God; and the heat he pours out may seem sometimes insufficient or excessive, even as in our ignorance we are dissatisfied with the blessings bestowed by the Almighty. Yet these very clouds are among the good works we owe to the sun-they bring the rain which 'drops fatness upon the earth:' and without the changes of the season there would be neither the time of harvest nor the time of vintage. The cold of winter and the heat of summer, at which we often repine as excessive, are as necessary for our wants as the cool breeze and the genial warmth of spring or autumn.

We commonly forget, also, that the sun, besides sustaining us by his light-giving and heat-supplying powers, keeps us always near to him by that mighty force of attraction which his vast bulk enables him to exert. When we look at the sun as he rises (even as 'the glory of God

coming from the way of the east') how seldom is the thought present in our minds that in that ruddy orb there exists the most tremendous power, swaying not only this vast globe on which we live, but orbs yet vaster than she is, and travelling on far wider courses; that the light and heat which seem to be gathering force as he rises, are in reality poured forth with fulness, even while as yet, owing to our position, we receive but little of them-nay, that during the dark hours of night they have been poured forth abundantly upon the earth; and that so rich is the sun in power and beneficence, through the might of his Creator and ours, that our earth is nourished and supported by the two thousand millionth part of the heat and light which he pours forth!

It will not be unprofitable to consider a little of what astronomy teaches about this stupendous orb, this emblem of the power and goodness of the Almighty-an emblem infinitely feeble, it must be conceded, even when the teachings of astronomy are considered, for we know that there are countless millions of such orbs, and of yet vaster orbs, within the reach even of the astronomer's telescope, but an emblem in this respect most apt, that our feeble imaginations are utterly unable to conceive its splendour, magnificence, and power.

This country on which we live is so minute, compared with the earth, that in a small globe or model of the earth it appears but as a scarcely distinguishable triangular speck. Yet we cannot conceive the dimensions of our own

country, and far less, therefore, those of the whole earth. Nevertheless, let it be remembered that the swiftest steamships, ploughing the seas night and day without cessation, require twelve weeks to complete the journey to the opposite side of the earth. Now let anyone draw a straight row of one hundred and seven minute circles or round dots, all equal in size and touching each other, and let him try to conceive a great cubical or die-shaped heap of little globes, the heap having along each edge just such a row of globes as has been drawn; then the combined volume of all the globes forming that heap would exceed any one of the globes, in just the same degree that the sun's volume exceeds the earth's. It would, in fact, take more than twelve hundred thousand earths to make so large a globe as the sun.

But it is not by his size that the sun's might is to be measured. Many comets have been far larger than the sun, which nevertheless have had scarcely any power of attraction. The sun's might, however, is such as we might expect from his enormous bulk. The quantity of matter in the sun exceeds that in our earth no less than 315,000 times; and his attractive energy is proportionately enormous. If our earth, without being increased in bulk, were increased in density until she contained the same quantity of matter as the sun, the weight of every object on the earth's surface would be increased 315,000 times. A halfounce weight, such as we use to weigh our letters, would press upon the earth as heavily as at present does a weight