reckoning; and if I remember right, your uncle T. made the Scilly lights within four or five miles; that is, he found himself, after traversing some thousands of leagues, just where he expected to be, within four or five miles; and though his chronometer (which, as you know, is a watch, or larger time-piece, constructed with extreme accuracy, whose balance-wheel is so formed as to be uninfluenced by changes of temperature) was of the first importance to him, it would have been of little use without the sun.

A summer without sunshine, and we should have a famine ;-a winter without the sun's occasionally cheering the earth, and most of the seeds would perish: but the Lord has given the ordinances of heaven for man's blessing; and summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, day and night, all come round according to their Creator's will and promise. (Gen. viii. 22.)

I have been oftentimes struck with that graphic narration of Paul's voyage, in Acts xxvii.; but the climax of the storm seems wrought up to the highest pitch in that description of ver. 20: "And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away." But there was One with Paul who had him in his care,* and he could either rebuke the storm or protect him in it: the latter was his will, and thus it was "that some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship; and so it came to pass, they all came safe to land." (Ver. 44.)

"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Matt. xxviii. 20.

Relative to the heavenly bodies, it is the opinion of some of the best and most learned of men, that they are inhabited; but this, as they themselves would readily allow, is all conjecture—they may, or they may not be; for the Scripture, which is the only book which could give us information on the subject (because it was written by Him who made them) is entirely silent concerning it. I am not aware that from Genesis to Revelation there is the slightest or most remote hint that such is the case. But it has, been said that it so enlarges our thoughts of the majesty and greatness of God to imagine all this glory-systems on systems, and the glorious throne of the Lord the sun of all-the source of light to all! But, my beloved children, we need not go abroad into the region of conjecture to get ideas about God's greatness; there is one subject connected with our earth so full of glory, that if our souls were rightly directed, they would never be taken from it; and this object is the cross of the Lord Jesus ChristTHE WISDOM OF GOD; for THERE mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other, (Ps. lxxxv. 10;) THERE Justice sheathes her glittering sword, and is the advocate of all who flee to the cross for refuge, (1 John i. 9;) THERE Mercy rejoices; for from the cross go forth blessings that never fail while there is an empty vessel to fill, (Luke xv. ;) THERE righteousness gets its full answer, for that blessed sufferer who by that cross expiated sin, did in his own person magnify the law and make it honourable, (Isa. xlii. 21;) indeed, had there been one blemish, one

personal blot on him, he could not have been a sacrifice; but God's Lamb, the only begotten of the Father, was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens: THERE peace gets authority for its blessed message of goodwill to man; for Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross, Col. i. 20;) he was the One that was pre-eminently the Peace-Maker, and had by nature and by right that BEATITUDE:-" blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God." (Matt. v. 9.) O my beloved children, if a man's soul be once steadily fixed on the cross of that blessed One who was with the Father over all, God blessed for ever, (Rom. ix. 5,) all other glories will fade. Supposing to-day that there were some astronomer, who had delighted in the thought that all the fixed stars were, like our sun, the centres of other systems, and that worlds on worlds were spread out illimitably on every side, but yet whose thoughts concerning his own future existence were all in vague uncertainty. If tidings came to him for the first time that the Son of the ever blessed God had become a man, and had bled and died upon this very planet, this earth, this speck in creation, and moreover that he had died for him, to bring him to peace here and happiness hereafter; and if the Spirit of God blessed these tidings to him, so that he believed them, and realized the blessed truth, and knew in his own soul that he was forgiven, (Luke vii. 48;) that his sins were put away, (John v. 24;) that he was adopted into the family of Him who made him, (Gal. iv. 6, 7 ;) taken from the wretchedness of nature and set among princes,

to inherit the throne of glory, (compare Eph. ii. 1–6, with 1 Sam. ii. 8;) beloved children, the eye of that astronomer would be fixed on that cross of Calvary; he would go to Jesus without the camp, bearing his reproach; and there he would offer ceaseless songs of praise, (Heb. xiii. 12-15,)-ONE OBJECT, one vast object, would fill his soul, and the language of his heart would be, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,” (Gal. vi. 14;) and this cross of Christ would supply him with infinitely more enlarged views of the glories of God than all his former speculations.

The word astronomy is taken from two Greek words, meaning "the law of the stars." Astronomy was the earliest of the sciences, and this seems most natural; indeed, God says that his invisible glory is manifested by that which is seen, so that the idolater is left without excuse. (Rom. i. 20.)

When we consider the great disadvantages the ancients laboured under, in the want of telescopes,* &c., the extent of knowledge they acquired concerning the heavenly bodies is wonderful.

The heads of the two great schools of ancient astronomy were Pythagoras and Ptolemy. The former was a native of Greece, and flourished five centuries before the Christian era, and the latter two hundred and twenty years after. Ptolemy held that the EARTH was the great centre round which the sun and all the heavenly bodies * See Appendix.

revolved. Pythagoras held the SUN to be the centre, round which the earth and planets all revolved; and thus he accounted for the APPARENT movement of the heavenly bodies. The system of Ptolemy, though now nearly exploded, prevailed for ages; but in the fifteenth century, COPERNICUS, a native of Thorne, in Polish Prussia, revived the principles of Pythagoras, and from him the Solar system is called the Copernican system. GALILEO,* a native of Florence, in the next century, followed in the same line; and to him we are indebted for the knowledge of the telescope and pendulum; he also determined from observation that the sun revolved on its axis. Then came Kepler, born at Wirtemberg, a man of great genius; and, finally, the system was established by the means of our illustrious countryman, Sir Isaac Newton; so that now a follower of Ptolemy is rarely met with. It was by the swinging of a lamp that Galileo was led to investigate the laws of the oscillation of the pendulum, which he was the first to apply as a measure of time, but he left the subject incomplete. His son, Vincenzo, improved upon his father's labours, and Huygens perfected it, who thus may be considered the true inventor of the pendulum clock. The telescope was not, strictly speaking, invented by Galileo, but he so improved it, that the heavens became opened to him by its powers to an astonishing degree.†

So strenuous was the opposition to the views of Galileo, that he was obliged, at the command of the church of Rome, to retract his opinions.

Popular Encyclopædia, vol. iii. p. 346.