7. Another year! another year! Help us earth's thorny path to tread; To Thee, ere yet our lives are fled. LESSON LXXX. THE TELESCOPE AND THE MICROSCOPE. THE telescope, by piercing the obscurity which limits the range of our unassisted vision, reveals to us countless worlds and wonders, which, without its aid, would never have been observed by human ken. Soon after the invention of the telescope, another instrument is formed, called the microscope, which lays open to our view scenes no less wonderful. By it we are enabled to discern, in every particle of matter, innumerable living creatures, too minute for the naked eye to discover. The telescope reveals to us a system in every star; the microscope leads us to see a world in every atom. 2. The one teaches us that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity; the other, that every grain of sand may harbor within it the tribes and families of a busy population. The one tells us of the magnificence of the world we tread upon the other redeems it from all its insignificance; for it tells us that in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firmament. 3. The one has suggested to us, that, beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may lie fields of creation which sweep immeasurably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes of the universe; the other suggests to us, that, within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may lie a region of invisibles; and that, could we draw aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we might there see a theater of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded,—a universe within the compass of a point so small, as to elude all the powers of the microscope, but where the wonderworking God finds room for the exercise of all His attributes, where He can raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the evidences of His glory. 4. By the telescope, we have discovered that no magnitude, however vast, is beyond the grasp of the Divinity; but, by the microscope, we have also discovered that no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice of the human eye, is beneath the condescension of His regard. Every addition to the powers of the one instrument, extends the limit of His visible dominions; but, by every addition of the powers of the other instrument, we see each part of them more crowded than before with the wonders of His unwearying hand. The one is constantly widening the circle of His territory; the other is as constantly filling up its separate portions with all that is rich, and various, and exquisite. 5. In a word, by the one we are told that the Almighty is now at work in regions more distant than geometry has ever measured, and among worlds more manifold than numbers have ever reached; but, by the other, we are also told, that with a mind to comprehend the whole, in the vast compass of its generality, He has also a mind to concentrate a close and a separate attention on each and all of its particulars; and that the same God, who sends forth an upholding influence among the orbs and the movements of astronomy, can fill the recesses of every single atom with the intimacy of His presence, and travel, in all the greatness of His unimpaired attributes, upon every spot and corner of the universe He has formed. LESSON LXXXI. IMMENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE. O. M. MITCHEL. "Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof? Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born, or because the number of thy days is great? JOB XXXviii. 19, 20, 21. G O with me to yonder "light-house* of the skies.' Poised on its rocky base, behold that wondrous tube which lifts the broad pupil of its eye high up, as if gazing instinctively into the mighty deep of space. Look out upon the heavens, and gather into your eye its glittering constellations. Pause, and reflect that over the narrow zone of the retina of your eye a universe is pictured, painted by light in all its exquisite and beautiful proportions. 2. Look upon that luminous zone which girdles the sky, * Observatory. observe its faint and cloudy light. How long, think you, that light has been streaming, day and night, with a swiftness which flashes it on its way twelve millions of miles in each and every minute?-how long has it fled and flashed through space to reach your eye and tell its wondrous tale? Not less than a century has rolled away since it left its home! Hast thou taken it at the bound thereof? Is this the bound, here the limit from beyond which light can never come? 3. Look to yonder point in space, and declare that thou beholdest nothing, absolutely nothing; all is blank, and deep, and dark. You exclaim,-"Surely no ray illumines that deep profound!" Place your eye for one moment to the tube that now pierces that seeming domain of night, and, lo! ten thousand orbs, blazing with light unutterable, burst on the astonished sight. Whence start these hidden suns? Whence comes this light from out deep darkness? Knowest thou, O man! the paths to the house thereof/? 4. Ten thousand years have rolled away since these wondrous beams set out on their mighty journey! Then you exclaim, "We have found the boundary of light; surely none can lie beyond this stupendous limit: far in the deep beyond, darkness unfathomable reigns! Look once more. The vision changes; a hazy cloud of light now fills the field of the telescope. Whence comes the light of this mysterious object? Its home is in the mighty deep, as far beyond the limit you had vainly fixed-ten thousand times as far—as that limit is beyond the reach of human vision. 5. And thus we mount, and rise, and soar, from hight to hight, upward, and ever upward still, till the mighty series ends, because vision fails, and sinks, and dies. Hast thou then pierced the boundary of light? Hast thou penetrated the domain of darkness? Hast thou, weak mortal, soared to the fountain whence come these wondrous streams, and taken the light at the hand thereof? Knowest thou the paths to the house thereof'? 6. Hast thou stood at yonder infinite origin, and bid that flash depart and journey onward, — days, and months, and years, century on century, through countless ages,-millions of years, and never weary in its swift career? Knowest thou when it started? "Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born, or because the number of thy days is great?" Such, then, is the language addressed by Jehovah to weak, erring, mortal man. How has the light of science flooded with meaning this astonishing passage! Surely, surely we do not misread, the interpretation is just. To LESSON LXXXII. THE FIRST PREDICTER OF AN ECLIPSE. O. M. MITCHEL. those who have given but little attention to the subject, even in our own day, with all the aids of modern science, the prediction of an eclipse seems sufficiently mysterious and unintelligible. How, then, it was possible, thousands of years ago, to accomplish the same great object, without any just views of the structure of the system, seems utterly incredible. 2. Follow then, in imagination, this bold interrogator of the skies to his solitary mountain summit; withdrawn from the world, surrounded by his mysterious circles, there to watch and ponder through the long nights of many, |