THE

CHRISTIAN READER.

No. I.

JANUARY, 1843.

VOL. II.

1

THE STARRY HEAVENS.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy work." Psalm xix. 1.

THE study of the heavenly bodies is perhaps the grandest and most absorbing pursuit that can occupy the intellect of man; but it requires much previous learning to enable us to understand the laws of their motion, their mutual action on each other, and thereby the place that any one of them will occupy at any given time. In writing this paper I shall keep close to the heading of it, and shall only give heed to that voice which they utter, in telling the glory of God.

Let us first make our observations. On a fine clear night the heaven above us is seen spangled with bright spots, scattered all over it, though not all equally bright, "for one star differeth from another star in glory." If we watch for an hour, or even less, nearly all these stars seem to have risen higher than they were on the Eastern side, and sunk lower if they were on the Western, but their relative positions one among another have kept unchanged. In fact they shew themselves as though they were fixed in the sky, that sky itself revolving round the earth. And furthermore, if we look again the next night about the same time, we shall see exactly the same position of them, whence we know that they revolve about us in a day, or 24 hours.

B

But besides these fixed stars, there are a few very bright ones that do not seem to keep their places, but to move about among the others, these are called planets: and those we can see with the naked eye are called Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn: of these Venus is the brightest, Jupiter the next, Saturn and Mars the next in brilliancy-the two former are brighter than any of the fixed stars, the other two are not so splendid. Take a pair of compasses, and with any centre strike off five circles; let the first circle be the orbit of Venus; in the next, place the Earth; let Mars occupy the third, Jupiter the fourth, Saturn the fifth circle; suppose them all to move round the Sun, (which put in the centre,) and all to move in the same direction round the Earth, draw another small circle, the Earth being its centre, and in this put the Moon, let her too move in her circle, in the same direction, and then you have a system which will explain all that you see, of the sun, moon and planets. The Moon is a dark body, and is illumined only by the Sun's light, this is the cause of her shewing her bright portion, sometimes large and sometimes small, with every change from the dark moon, to the bright full one. Let the reader take a ball, and near it put a candle, (having no other light in the room,) then half the ball will always be enlightened, but if he walks around the ball he will not see the whole bright half, except when the candle is just between him and the ball, and in walking round he will observe all the changes of the Moon accurately displayed. Venus presents the same appearances, but they must be viewed through a telescope.

Another thing we notice is this, Mars (who is known by his red fiery color) is seen in all quarters of the heavens, so is Jupiter, so is Saturn; but Venus is never far from the Sun, consequently she can be seen only a little before sun rise, (then she is a morning star,) or a little after sunset, in which case she is an evening star.

Now this is easily accounted for; in the circles above named (and which I recommend the reader to draw, if not already familiar with the subject,) we notice that the orbit of Venus lies within that of the Earth, but the circles of the others are outside that of our globe. Now try the Earth and Venus in every point in their orbits, and Venus can never be made opposite the Sun, but the others will be so in the course of their revolution. As to distances let the radius be for Venus about 7, the Earth 10, Mars 15, Jupiter 52, and Saturn 95; such being (in rough numbers) the comparative distances of these bodies from the Sun. All these planets describe a complete circle in a time which is shorter as they are nearer to the Sun, which is (if they be inhabited) their year; thus Venus requires 224 days, the Earth 365, Mars 686, Jupiter 4332, and Saturn 10759, to complete the circle.

The whole of these heavenly bodies are governed by known laws, and so regular are they, that the astronomer can tell the precise place they occupied, hundreds of years ago, and the position they will all have, hundreds of years hence; "They continue unto this day, O God, according to thine ordinance, for all things serve thee." The Almighty "appointed the moon for certain seasons, and the sun knoweth his going down."

But we have said nothing about the circle of the fixed stars. Suppose all the forementioned circles drawn on a piece of paper, let eighths of an inch (which are marked on the common rule,) be the scale we use, taking 7 of them for Venus, 10 for the Earth, and so on. Now from the same centre conceive a vast circle drawn with a radius of a mile, and put the stars somewhere beyond it, this would not be sufficient to express the comparative distance of these fixed stars.

The Earth is about 95 millions of miles from the Sun, now if one quarter inch represent 95 millions of miles,

what would a mile represent? Here is a rule of three sum to shew us the inconceivable distance of these stars. The reader may ask, how do we know they are so distant? are we sure of it, or is it a guess? and the answer is that the proof of it rests on the simplest principles of mathematical science, and there is no uncertainty about the matter.

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord, but to the heavens we must go to overpower our imaginations with the "exceeding weight" of his glory; one grain of sand compared with our earth, is larger than our world is compared with these vast creatures of God. As touching the stars, we will think of their distance, their size, and their number. The distance is a point easily settled; we have no figures to express it; it is our nearest conception of Infinite. I shall not attempt to explain the mode of its demonstration, which depends on a nice measurement of angles, and the theorems of tregonometry, but only wish to fill the reader's mind with the overwhelming result of the fact. Dr. Bradley thought that his instruments enabled him to assign the nearest fixed star to be 38,000,000,000,000 miles, a distance we have no ordinary language to name, and one that if named lies utterly beyond our imaginations to realize or conceive; the best way to approach it would be by variety of illustration: a cannon ball goes at such a pace, how long would it take to reach this nearest star? and then a rule of three sum performs what we require. But then (0 the greatness of God's works!) the astronomers who lived with and since Bradley are convinced that his instrument misled him; he assumed a very small angular change, when there was really none that could be measured, and therefore the nearest star may be millions of millions of miles further than he states, for any thing that we can discover. The distance then being thus settled as so enormous, the size follows.