God's Second Book

Starry

HOW THE EARTH IS KEPT UP.

IN an English book, entitled "Glimpses of the Globe," written for young readers by Mr. J. R. Blakiston, of Trinity College, Cambridge, we have the following instructive dialogue between a little boy and his uncle: "Uncle, I have often meant to ask you how the earth is kept up, as it travels spinning around the sun?"

"I thought you would be asking me that some day. I fear you will have to wait till you are much older before you can hope to understand it. Do you see yon bright star rising over the windmill? That also, like the earth, is a roamer round the sun.

Yon star setting behind Dungeness is another planet; and there are many others, some greater, some less, which wheel day and night, without ceasing, around the sun, spinning as they speed along."

"Then they, too, have days and nights, as we have?"

"Yes, and perhaps seasons; for they all travel, as we do, somewhat aslant. Two of them are as much larger than our earth as a large and a small orange are than a pea, and have, one four, the other eight, moons wheeling around to light them by night."

"And do they travel as quickly as we do?"

"The largest planet (large enough to make thirteen hundred earths) spins more than twice as fast as the earth. Even at the equator, the earth spins only at the rate of seventeen miles in a minute."

"Seventeen miles in a minute! Why, I wonder we are not all of us,

houses and everything, hurled off, as the water when one trundles a hoop."

"Look at the hands of the clock.

You know that the large hand goes all round once every hour, and that the short hand takes twelve hours to go once round. Well, if your eyes are good enough to see the long hand moving, you certainly cannot see the short hand move, can you?"

"No, indeed!"

"Now, the earth takes twice as long as that to roll once round."

"Yes; I remember, it takes twenty-four hours to roll round. How many miles is it round the earth?"

"Nearly twenty-five thousand at the equator.' Thus every hour the earth has to roll more than a thousand miles.

It would take a train five weeks to go round the earth, if it went thirty miles an hour, day and night, without stopping."

"You once told me that the sun was as much larger than the earth as an orange is larger than a tiny seed. Is the moon, too, as large? It looks as big."

"Oh, dear, no! The moon is far smaller then the earth; but it is not so far away as the sun is. More than a million earths could be made out of the sun. Fifty moons might be made out of the earth."

"And how many stars could be made out of the moon? I've heard Widow Jones say the old moons were cut up to make stars."

"Why, my dear boy, the stars are mostly great suns, so far away, that, if a new star were created, years would pass before its light could travel through space to reach our eyes, and enable us to see it. If one of them were destroyed, years would pass before its light would cease to twinkle.

Such a thing has really happened oftener than once. A star has blazed up, burnt out, and been seen no more."

"What an awful thing to think of!"

"Ay, Charlie, you know the psalm, 'The heavens declare the glory of God.' There are few things more solemn than to sail for days together over the great deep, and to watch the countless stars rise and set as one keeps watch on deck at night. They that go down to the sea in ships see the wonders of the sky as well as of the deep. Alone with God, we hear his still, small voice speaking to us in the night-watches."

"What a grand sight it would be to be set somewhere so that one could see the earth rolling round the sun!

How fast does it travel?"

"Every minute it speeds more than a thousand miles on its way, every second more than eighteen miles. But figures like these are mere words to us. We can neither see nor feel the earth's motion. You may form some faint idea of a heavenly body's motion from a sling. As long as you keep the sling whirling round your head, the stone is held tight: let go the string, and off flies the stone.

The string is as the sun, drawing in the planets, which else would fly off who knows where?"

Starry

STARS

Jesus Tears

Orion