ch it in from five to six seconds, while over a distance as
great as that which separates the earth from the sun the news would be
carried in about eight minutes. We can calculate how long a time must
elapse ere the light shall travel over a distance so great as that
between the star and our earth. You will find that from the nearest of
the stars the time required for the journey will be over three years.
Ponder on all that this involves. That outbreak in the star might be
great enough to be visible here, but we could never become aware of it
till three years after it had happened. When we are looking at such a
star to-night we do not see it as it is at present, for the light that
is at this moment entering our eyes has travelled so far that it has
been three years on the way. Therefore, when we look at the star now
we see it as it was three years previously. In fact, if the star were
to go out altogether, we might still continue to see it twinkling for
a period of three years longer, because a certain amount of light was
on its way to us at the moment of extinction, and so long as that
light keeps arriving here, so long shall we see the star showing as
brightly as ever. When, therefore, you look at the thousands of stars
in the sky to-night, there is not one that you see as it is now, but
as it was years ago.

I have been speaking of the stars that are nearest to us, but there
are others much farther off. It is true we cannot find the distances
of these more remote objects with any degree of accuracy, but we can
convince ourselves how great that distance is by the following
reasoning. Look at one of the brightest stars. Try to conceive that
the object was carried away further into the depths of space, until it
was ten times as far from us as it is at present, it would still
remain bright enough to be recognized in quite a small telescope; even
if it were taken to one hundred times its original distance it would
not have withdrawn from the view of a good telescope; while if it
retreated one thousand times as far as it was at first it would still
be a recognizable point in our mightiest instruments. Among the stars
which we can see with our telescopes, we feel confident there must be
many from which the light has expended hundreds of years, or even
thousands of years, on the journey. When, therefore, we look at such
objects, we see them, not as they are now, but as they were ages ago;
in fact, a star might have ceased to