r axes and around their centre of gravity, sweep
in a vastly wider curve around the sun. Add as many moons as has
Jupiter or Saturn, the result is the same--an orderly carrying
of worlds through space.

There lies the unsupported sun in the centre, nearer to infinity
in all its capacities and intensities of force than our minds can
measure, filling the whole dome to where the stars are set with
light, heat, and power. It holds five small worlds--Vulcan, Mercury,
Venus, Earth, and Mars--within a space whose radius it would require
a locomotive half a thousand years to traverse. It next holds some
indeterminate number of asteroids, and the great Jupiter, equal in
volume to 13,000 earths. It holds Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and
all their variously related satellites and rings. The two thoughts
that overwhelm us are distance and power. The period of [Page 178]
man's whole history is not sufficient for an express train to
traverse half the distance to Neptune. Thought wearies and fails in
seeking to grasp such distances; it can scarcely comprehend one
million miles, and here are thousands of them. Even the wings of
imagination grow weary and droop. When we stand on that outermost of
planets, the very last sentinel of the outposts of the king, the
very sun grown dim and small in the distance, we have taken only one
step of the infinite distance to the stars. They have not changed
their relative position--they have not grown brighter by our
approach. Neptune carries us round a vast circle about the centre of
the dome of stars, but we seem no nearer its sides. In visiting
planets, we have been only visiting next-door neighbors in the
streets of a seaport town. We know that there are similar neighbors
about Sirius and Arcturus, but a vast sea rolls between. As we said,
we stand with the outermost sentinel; but into the great void beyond
the king of day sends his comets as scouts, and they fly thousands
of years without for one instant missing the steady grasp of the
power of the sun. It is nearer almightiness than we are able to
think.

If we cannot solve the problems of the present existence of worlds,
how little can we expect to fathom the unsoundable depths of their
creation and development through ages measureless to man! Yet the
very difficulty provokes the most ambitious thought. We toil at
the problem because it has been hitherto unsolvable. Every error
we make, and discover to be such, helps toward the final solutio