Not only are the stars like our Sun in their make, but also in movement. Not one individual of that radiant host is at rest. All are moving; all are journeying; all are hastening this way and that way, singly or in couples or in companies. And if they have any planets, any attendant worlds, those planets or worlds travel with them. The speed of our Sun-which means the speed of the entire Solar System-is not very great, when compared with that of other suns; or so we believe. He travels through space at a rate of perhaps about twelve miles each second. Listen to the clock-onetwo! Between those two ticks the Sun with the whole of his family has gone forward twelve miles. And if you wish to see vividly what this means, multiply the twelve by sixty, and you will know how many miles. he goes in one minute. Multiply that figure again by sixty, and you will know how many miles he goes in one hour. Multiply that again by twenty-four, and you will know how many miles he goes in one day. If you go on thus multiplying, you can discover what is his speed in miles each week, each month, and each year. Certainly it is not a speed to be despised, when compared with earthly speeds. Yet if this estimate of his rate of travel be correct our Sun is by no means a particularly energetic specimen of his kind. Among other stars of the Universe, which have been closely studied, a general average pace is said to be somewhere about twenty miles each second. But there are others which go far beyond this rate. One of the brightest in our sky is Arcturus, a magnificent sun, believed to be enormously larger and more radiant than our Sun. Though he lies at a very great distance, the speed of this sun is more or less roughly known, and it sounds terrific―a rush of something like two hundred and fifty miles each second. Yet if a man kept watch year after year he would see no change in the position of Arcturus. Only the most delicate observation, with the most accurate of instruments, could show the very, very small advance. In nine hundred years, Arcturus moves visibly across a little breadth of the sky as wide as our full Moon looks to us. We are thinking now of real movements, not of any seeming shift of position caused by movements of our own. Arcturus really travels at about that rate, and really moves across the sky as much as the width of the full Moon in not much less than a thousand years. Naturally, men were a good while in finding out that tiny change in his position. But does not this help to make clear what the wide distances of our Universe must be? Other very rapid stars are known, though perhaps none quite so overwhelming as Arcturus, with his great size, his extraordinary radiance, and his wild onward rush. He and certain others have been named " runaway stars, yet with them, as with the rest, we find obedience to law, perfect control, and orderly advance. Where all these suns are hastening, no man can say. Many attempts have been made to find the goal of our own Sun, with varying results. Whether the stars in general go straight forward, or travel in vast curves, cannot be known with certainty, at least as to the greater number. We only know that all are on the move, that all are wending their way-somewhere! But where each one is going, and what may be the purpose of each one's journey, this is known only by Him, to Whom it could be said "The heavens are the works of Thy Hands." 1 Jean Ingelow wrote "The elders of the night, the steadfast stars, The old, old stars which God has let us see, And a little clay being over of them-He Memory recalls a curiously opposite view from that of the last few lines. Many years ago I had gone to Oxford, to make the personal acquaintance of the then Savilian Professor of Astronomy, Dr. Pritchard, after 1 Heb. i. 10. |