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Show SOfVSE OLD FACTS IN NW CLOTS1ES - COMPLIED BY TOM W. WINDER : K '"The vast earth hangs upon nothing in Amply space, sweeping around the sin a thousand times swifter Hum tho swiftest railroad train over fli'.-s; It leans upon the plane of its orbit as a racer luans upon his path as he runs" and if ft should lean a little more or a little less, or if it should break over lis uiucnced track, what then? LIGHT. . The apostle of old spoke more wisoly than ho himself know when ho said, "God is light." In a single sentence of three short words he gave even tin-most tin-most advanced philosophers of our time their grandest conception of a Being Be-ing who is everj'whero at each and every moment of time. Light is the crown and glory of the visiblo -world. It is the source of life and energy to the body. So far as we know it is (he most beautiful and glorious of all the material works of Clod. The first borii of creation, it is the ethereal body and form of the Onniifie word at which it flashed into beauty. It is the chosen being through which fhe Divine energy continues to bestow and sustain life. ISvorything that lives and grows in the whole kingdom of nature derives strength and stimulus from the light. There is no life beyond the reach of light. .If the light of the sun should be put out. in three days there would not be a trace of vegetable or animal life, left on tho fai-e of the globe. The ocean of water which is always floating in the air above us would descend de-scend in deluges of rain and drifts of blinding snow. The rivers, the lakes and tho sea would bo changed to solid ice. Tho temperature of tho whole atmosphere at-mosphere would fall 42(30 degrees below be-low tho free.inir point, and no plant or animal could live in such a cold for an hour. Tt is tho silent and peaceful light which keeps tho world from becoming be-coming such an icy grave, such a wilderness wil-derness of death "at any hour. And yot of this subtle and mysterious agency we know nothing, except its effects. ef-fects. "Wo see all filings by the help of its light, but tho light itself we cannot can-not seo. "Wo cannot weigh it in the balances, wc cannot measure its form or dimensions. We cannot touch its body or substance. Wc cannot hear the sound of its coining or going, its presenco in every drop makes no change of tasto in tho purest fountain. We cannot estimate tho limits of its power. Its waves are shot from the sun. moon and more distant stars with such terrific ter-rific force that it looses no velocity in il3ring a thousand million leagues. Tho vibrations of air in producing the highest note of sound upon the ear aro about S000 in a second. The waves or impulses of light in producing the sensation of color upon the 03-0 are 8UU millions of millions in a second. The force with which rays of light arc shot from the sun to carry them so fast and so far is thirty thousand million times greater than the force with which a leaden ball would fall from your hand to tho floor. If a ray of light equaled the weight of a grain of sand, a single second of suiisluue would shatter the earth to atoms. Tho heat of the surface of the sun, which sends us our light, is so intense that to equal it on ono square rod of ground we would be obliged to bum ono thousand tons of coal a day. The great firo, which tlie breath or tho Almighty Al-mighty has kindled to keep our oarth warm, sends out two thousand million limes as much light and heat as the whole earth receives; and yet. 'the ficry fountain Hows on free and full from ago to age. vioa nas maue a covenant or the dav and night, that the laws of growth and decay and the seasons of sowing and reaping shall remain unchanged as long as the earth stands. Should God forget this covenant so far as to increase in-crease or diminish in tho least the length of time in which the groat earth-wheel earth-wheel turns on its axle, it would do-range do-range and 111 the end destroy tho wholo kingdom of nature. It is only because tho baud of the Almighty turns tho axle of the earth with perfect uniform-ity uniform-ity beneath our feet, that wo aro able to walk our streets by day or sleep in our houses by night. Tho vast globe of the earth swings in empty space with no support save tho upholding word of the Almighty God. It flies in its orbit a thousand times faster than tho swiftest swift-est railroad train. It rolls upon its axis so swift that a point on the surfaco of the equator moves as far as from Boston to SI. Louis in a single hour. It is this rolling of tho earth on its axis that brings flic day and ui"ht And the revolution is completed in 'absolutely 'ab-solutely the same time from ago to age. Tho greatest astronomers tho world has oven oecu, skeptic and Christian Chris-tian alike, solemnly dcclaro that the sideral day has not. varied in 3000 year the one hundredth part of a second' If in ninety generations of men the day had grown longer or shorter by tho hun-dredth hun-dredth part of the time that it takes the heart to boat once, astronomers could detect the change. Jiut . instruments instru-ments that, can measure eighty one-thousandths one-thousandths part of a second in' space and the observations that have been continued 15000 years of time, can discover dis-cover no variation. H is impossible for any one of us io move our hands a single yard or to walk the length of a two-horse wagon with a uniform motion. mo-tion. The inventive genius of men has never been able to make a wheel perform per-form ono revolution with perfect uniformity. uni-formity. Tho unseen hand of God has been turning this vast earth for 3000 years aud men have 'been watching the revolutions with the nicest scrutiny till they havo counted more than a mi'llion and yet in all that timo they have not detected tho hundredth part of a second of irregularity. Tho heavens dcclaro the glory of God by their vastuess of extent. Wc think it a long voyage to cross tho Atlantic ocean, yet wo should have to travel that distance 10,000 times beforo we could reach our nearest planetary neighbor revolving in company with' us around tho sun. To reach the most romole of tho little family of planets belonging to our system, wu would have to travel a million times as fnrJas from Philadelphia Philadel-phia to San l?ranci6co. Our earth is 1 -'5,000 miles in circumference, and yet ' light flies with such inconccivablo ve- locity that it would encompass our K carta" five times whilo we pronounco V the word. The nearest star which wo r. E see in the heavens is so far distant t h that it takes three years in reaching our f. f. eye. The light of the Polar star left j; (i its distant homo before tho birth of y ; some of the oldest people now living. $ Long as the man who is ten years past j; :C middle life has lived in tho world, the J; ft. quenchless beam has been flying across s the abyss of space, near 200 miles ovcrv S second'. v'tud it has only just reached u S this moment. h l Aud still more than this. You havo I only to look up on any clear night, you J: S will seo stars whoso light has been" on its journey millions of years to meet ' E your eye. Tho star may havo been R blotted out of existence millions o j years beforo the creation of jnan. and ; yet the stream of light which was on '( its way, and hv which it is seen, will ; continue to come for a million years in 1 the future. 'j The dimensions of the stars are aj astonishing as (Jicir distauce. Arc-turns Arc-turns sends forth a flood of light i)00 times as groat; us our noonday. Our $ sun is more than a million times as large as our earth, and yet ono star of the Pleiades is equal in glory to l IL'OO of our suns, and there are eigh V teen millions of suns in the system to which our system belongs as one And V! asl ronotnors" have discovered 4000 such j(! systems seventy-two millions of suns, 'i and every sun doubtless surrounded by a thousand lesser worlds! c |