ook one of your children, and showed him that large
bright star, which you may see now every evening, shining in the
south-west, and said to him, 'My child, that star, which looks to
you only a bright speck, is in reality a world--a world fourteen
hundred times as big as our world. We have but one moon to light
our earth; that little speck has four moons, each of them larger
than ours, which light it by night. That little speck of a star
seems to you to be standing still; in reality, it is travelling
through the sky at the rate of 25,000 miles an hour.' What do you
think the child's feeling would be? If he were a dull child, he
might only be astonished; but if he were a sensible and thoughtful
child, do you not think that a feeling of awe, almost of fear, would
come over him, when he thought how small and weak and helpless he
was, in comparison of those mighty and glorious stars above his
head?

And next, if I turned the child round, and bade him look at that
comet or fiery star, which has appeared lately low down in the
north-west, and said, 'My child, that comet, which seems to you to
hang just above the next parish, is really eighty millions of miles
off from us. That bright spot at the lower part of it is a fiery
world as large as the moon,--that tail of fiery light which you see
streaming up from it, and which looks a few feet long, is a stream
of fiery vapour, stretching, most likely, hundreds of thousands of
miles through the boundless space. It seems to you to be sinking
behind the trees, so slowly that you cannot see it move. It is
really rushing towards us now, with its vast train of light, at the
rate of some eighty thousand miles an hour.' And suppose then, if,
to make the child more astonished than ever, I went on--'Yes, my
child, every single tiny star which is twinkling over your head is a
sun, a sun as large, or larger than our own sun, perhaps with worlds
moving round it, as our world moves round our sun, but so many
millions of miles far off, that the strongest spy-glass cannot make
these stars look any larger, or show us the worlds which we believe
are moving round them.'

Do you not think that just in proportion to the child's quickness
and understanding, he would be awed, almost terrified?

And lastly, suppose that to puzzle and astonish him still more, I
took a chance drop of water out of any standing pool, and showed him
through a magnifying-glass, in that single drop of water, dozens,