of four and a half tons. A man's body would be crushed down as by the weight of 315,000 men, or more than 20,000 tons. A body raised to a height of a single inch from the ground and then let fall would strike the ground with a velocity three times as great as that of the swiftest express train.

It is the might which the sun thus possesses by virtue of his enormous mass which enables him to control the motions of the family of planets circling continually around him. The movements of these bodies are so beautifully adjusted to their distances from the great body which rules them, that each describes a path very nearly circular. The nearer globes he draws more strongly towards him, but their swifter motions enable them to maintain their distance; the farther planets travel more slowly, but at their distances the sun's power is correspondingly reduced.

A cold and inert mass of matter, however, would be able to do all that the sun does by his mere mass, and yet be utterly unfit to be, like him, the ruler over a scheme of circling worlds. The glory of the sun is not in his strength alone. As Sir John Herschel has well said, 'Giant Size and Giant Strength are ugly qualities without beneficence. But the sun is the almoner of the Almighty, the delegated dispenser to us of light and warmth, as well as the centre of attraction; and as such the immediate source of all our comforts, and indeed of the very possibility of our existence on earth.'

If we would rightly measure the sun's activity as a

dispenser of God's gifts of light and heat, we must consider what our earth alone receives. On a glorious summer's day, when the air seems aglow with the sun's light and on fire with his heat, we are strongly impressed with the sense of the sun's intense activity. And yet in our temperate latitudes we seldom experience any approach to the burning heats of the tropics. But even in the full heat of a tropical noon, the solar energy actually expended over the whole region which any one spectator can discern is but a minute part of that which he is exercising every instant of time on the half of the earth turned towards him. It has been calculated that the heat received by the earth during twenty-four hours would be sufficient to raise an ocean 260 yards deep, covering the whole surface of the earth, from the temperature of freezing water to that of boiling water. And this, be it remembered, is less than the 2000 millionth part of the heat which the sun space during the same interval of time. wonderful stream of heat-waves is poured out on all sides. So energetic is it that the heat emitted in a single second would suffice to boil 195 millions of cubic miles of ice-cold water. Or, to take another illustration, which recent experience as to the value of our coal supplies will bring home to many of us with peculiar force-in order to produce by the burning of coals the supply of heat which we receive from the sun, there would have to be consumed on every square yard of the sun's surface no less

pours out into Ceaselessly the

than six tons of coal per hour; while, if a globe as large as our earth had to maintain such a supply of heat, it would be necessary that on every square yard of its surface more than three tons of coals should be consumed in every second of time.

We cannot wonder that the source of so vast a supply of heat should be the scene of tremendous processes of disturbance. The furnace whose fires maintain the life of the solar system is not merely aglow with intense light and heat, but is in a state of fierce turmoil. The most tremendous conflagrations ever witnessed upon our earth -great fires, by which whole cities have been destroyed -serve to suggest something of what is going on upon the sun, only that all the processes of such catastrophes must be supposed to be intensified a million-fold. As in great fires there is a constant roar and tumult produced by the rush of air currents which the fire itself has generated, so in every part of the sun, on every square yard of that enormous surface, the most hideous uproar must prevail as fierce cyclonic storms, bred by solar fires, rush with inconceivable velocity over the flaming surface. In the most tremendous storms known upon earth the wind does not travel a hundred miles per hour, and the winds which rage amid the flames of a conflagration are of slow motion compared with true hurricanes; but the cyclonic storms which stir the fiery breath of the solar flames career often with the inconceivable velocity of more than a hundred miles in every second of time. And the flames

themselves are on a scale altogether inconceivable by us. A considerable proportion attain a height exceeding ten times the diameter of our earth; and some have been observed which have attained twice that height. But tremendous as are the motions taking place in the solar flames, even more wonderful are the effects of solar eruptions. By these tremendous throes matter is carried. sometimes at the rate of four or five hundred miles per second from the visible surface of the sun. This velocity not only exceeds many hundred-fold the swiftest motion known to us--the flight of a cannon-ball 2—but even surpasses the velocity with which the swiftest of the celestial bodies travel on their courses. Our earth travels about 18 miles per second, Mercury more than half as fast again; and one or two comets have been known to travel with a velocity of more than three hundred miles per second as they made their perihelion swoop round the sun. But no known celestial object has ever possessed

3

Motions at this rate have not been actually observed; but matter has been seen to move upwards from the surface at such a rate that a simple calculation shows the rate of emission to have been certainly five hundred miles per second, and probably very much greater. For a remarkable instance, observed by Prof. C. A. Young, of America, see my treatise on 'The Sun' (2nd edition), chap. vi.

2 Light and electricity travel very much more swiftly, but in the flight of either there is no transmission of matter.

To attain this velocity they must approach very closely to the sun; and in point of fact, the great comet of 1680 (Newton's) passed so close to the sun that the nucleus, or centre of the head, was nearer than the summits of some of the largest solar prominences. The nucleus of the remarkable comet of 1843 passed yet closer.

a velocity approaching the tremendous rate at which glowing matter has been expelled from the sun's interior.

Such are some of the marvellous processes taking place in that orb which to the unaided vision of man seems calm as the depths of a summer sky, although

Beyond expression bright

Compared with aught on earth, metal or stone.

When we compare what the eye of man sees with what is actually going on in the sun, and consider further how small a way even the astronomer has advanced towards the interpretation of the wonderful orb which rules the solar system, we may well exclaim with the great apostle of the Gentiles, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!'

2