heavens shall pass away with a great noise; and the elements shall melt with fervent heat: the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up.' For aught that is certainly known, the mere daily continuance of the sun's light and heat may be due to causes which need only be excited to unusual activity to produce such a catastrophe. We know now that the sun is undergoing processes which, although regular in their effects regarded as a whole, are locally irregular. Sometimes there are outbursts in the sun, which suggest very significantly the possibility of much more terrible, because more general catastrophes.

It seems, for instance, that a great local increase of solar action is produced when large meteoric masses fall upon the sun. Now, if it chanced that some large comet, arriving from outer space, should fall directly upon the sun, it is most probable that (as Newton once suggested) the effect would be a great, though temporary, increase in the sun's light and heat. Some comets have come near enough to remind us of the possibility of such a catastrophe. Newton's Comet (1680) passed at a distance of less than a third of the sun's diameter from his surface, and the comet of 1843 came even nearer. A very slight change in the direction of either comet, when still at a great distance from the sun, would have led to the catastrophe Newton feared. It may be that the catastrophe would do little harm, or would only affect the comet itself. But for my own part I cannot but think that the inhabitants

of this earth have far more to fear from the fall of a comet upon the sun than from the once dreaded collision of a comet with our earth. It is no unreasonable inference that the great conflagration which caused the star in the Northern Crown to blaze out so remarkably, was produced by the downfall of a comet or flight of meteoric masses upon that orb. In this case it is quite within the bounds. of possibility that our sun may one day experience a similar fate.

We are apt to forget these possibilities, for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this we willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same Word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation -looking for the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.'

THE FLIGHT OF LIGIIT.

Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.—2 PETER iii. 8.

ONE of the most startling thoughts suggested by the study of the heavens on a dark and clear night, is the recollection that what we look at is not what is actually in existence as seen. We turn our eyes to the blazing Sirius, and it seems incredible that in reality we are not looking at that noble sun as it is now, but as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Yet nothing is more certain. The rate with which light travels has been measured in several ways, and no question can remain as to the accuracy of the result. It is certain light does not travel at a greater rate than 190,000 miles per second. Again, it is certain that Sirius lies at least a million times farther away from us than our sun.

Now, light takes more than eight minutes in reaching us from the sun, whose distance is more than 91,000,000 of miles; and it is easily calculated that the long journey from Sirius cannot be traversed in less than fifteen years. More probably it requires upwards of twenty years; and the greater number of the stars we see on a dark and

clear night lie very much farther away than Sirius. Some of them certainly lie at distances which light can only traverse in hundreds of years. So soon as we turn, however, to telescopic stars, the range of time over which our vision extends is enormously increased, and it is certainly not too much to say that some of the fainter stars revealed by the great Rosse telescope lie at distances so enormous that their light has taken more than a hundred thousand years in reaching us. Then beyond these stars lie millions and millions of orbs yet farther away. There is no limit to the range of space occupied thus with the work of God's hands. All that has been taught us by astronomy suggests the lesson that every moment light reaches this earth from unseen orbs so far away that the journey over the vast abysses separating us from them has not been completed in less than millions

of years.

And here a wonderful thought presents itself. We see the starlit heavens with the small organ called the eye, opening by a circle less than a quarter of an inch in diameter upon all these wonders. The telescope has enhanced the power of this organ, but the telescope does not, like the unaided eye, show the whole of the starlit sky at once. Yet again, even the telescope is but a minute instrument when compared with the very least of the celestial objects which it reveals. Now, if it be remembered that our estimates of the wonders of creation have been formed by these imperfect, these utterly feeble

means, we begin to perceive that our conceptions of the universe are as nothing compared with the reality.

Imagine for a moment what would be seen if each one of us possessed a power of vision exceeding a million-fold that given by means of the Rosse telescopes. This conception, startling as it seems, does not alter the reality. The wonders we should then see exist, though they are unseen. They may be manifest to beings unlike ourselves, to the angels and ministers of the Creator. But whatever opinions we form on this point, we must not doubt that to the Creater Himself they are more than manifest. All our senses cannot suggest to us the absolute knowledge which He possesses of all His universe. We see, and touch, and smell, and taste, and hear, and thus come to know some little about the things nearest to us. But our knowledge even of such things is imperfect. And these senses are but five among myriads of possible senses, each one of which would add some new knowledge about every existent object.

The range of our senses, also, is exceedingly limited. We can understand this even from what we know of other creatures. The sense of smell in the dog, for example, is a sense utterly unlike our human sense in the information it conveys to the animal possessing it. A dog lives and moves among smells even as a man lives and moves among sights; it is probable even that some dogs can recognise the shape and something of the constitution of objects by the sense of smell, as perfectly