be nothing else than some other planet as yet unknown, whose influence might attract Uranus from its normal course.

They carried out their theory to its legitimate conclusion, assumed this new planet of our solar system, which would explain Uranus's eccentricity, and, by the process of elimination, announced that in a certain portion of the heavens, at such and such a time our new planet would be found.

It was so found, at the hour fixed, and Neptune, one of the mammoths of the universe, was proven to us. It was discovered by pure mathematics, and is the triumph of astronomical calculation and exactness.

When we consider the Sidereal system, therefore, we may accept the astronomers' views almost as if we saw through their telescope with our own eyes, and had verified their figures by an expert mathematician.

Thus, we know that there exist, millions and millions of miles beyond our Sun, innumerable other suns. Every fixed star that we see in the shining heavens is another sun, presumably much greater, hotter and more important than

our own.

There can no more be life on these suns than on our own. But we can imagine no cause for their being, unless they also give heat, light, and all their consequences to their myriads of satellites and make life possible for innumerable other worlds.

Does the layman question the existence and infinity of these suns?

No proof is easier than that heretofore suggested, which a good opera glass affords. On a clear night the naked eye may find in the heavens such and so many stars. The most perfect count in the most favorable locations will disclose about five thousand. The opera glass will bring many others to our view, and increase our knowledge. A small telescope will add still more to our vision. Even in the time of Sir John Herschel no less than five million were claimed to be in sight.

The greater the power of the glass, the greater the galaxy shown to us; and the more we perfect our lenses and appliances the more and more millions are proven to our sight. And then comes modern telescopic photography, with its accumulation of perfect proofs, and lo! a myriad more of stars are shown to us,

and heavenly marvels beyond understanding and almost beyond belief. There is no lack of stars to see. There is absolutely no limit to them. There is only the limitation of modern mechanism which prevents us from seeing all the stars. It is only the finite which prevents us from seeing the infinite. But the finite of mechanical science can only creep on to some advances. It is almost enough to expect of it to-day that it shows us the moon as if two hundred and forty miles away, instead of its real distance, a quarter of million miles from this earth.

There is one more answer for the simpleminded, who hesitates to accept the distances of the fixed stars as postulated by the astronomers. The problem is not so difficult, it is only a question of accuracy. Knowing the base line and the angle, it is child's play to calculate the height of a mountain; and with the stars, the problem is no less simple, except that by reason of their tremendous distances we lack the sufficient basis. The extreme orbit of the earth is our ultimate base, and that is admittedly a limitation in calculating infinite remoteness. But the approximate figures of

the fixed stars as they are related to us, may be safely accepted by any but the more persistent astronomers. They will certainly suffice for the purposes of this article.

There is one more fact concerning the stars which must be considered in this long preamble. This concerns the velocity of light. Light takes a measurable time to travel, swift as it moves. In a summer thunder shower we see the lightning and later hear the crash of the thunder. The difference between sight and sound tells us how far away the lightning may be. Five seconds of time means a mile from the flash. In brief, light travels a million times as fast as sound. It will flash seven times around the earth in a second; and yet that which comes to us from the heavens takes an appreciable period. For example, eight minutes is needed for the sun's light to reach the earth. Jupiter's comes to us in half an hour. The nearest star is so much more remote, that its rays attain to us only as they blazed out years ago. The light of farther stars we see as of still longer past, a hundred, a thousand and even a million of years. It may humble us to realize, as a corollary to this, that the light of

our globe is far, far too small to reach to any star. We are quite as unknown to them as is the light of their satellites to us.

And there is this astounding thought that many of the bright or fainter stars which we view in the sky to-night may long since have burned out and become extinct, while their beams are still traveling toward us.

All of which leads to this consideration. If we imagine a person, a power, a being, a God, omnipresent as He must be-from the view point of the various stars-He must see and know the history of this earth from its beginning until to-day. Every item of our past, however minute, is still in continuous view and in perpetual remembrance.

This is a mere suggestion of what astronomy tells us; it leads our imagination into possibilities as deep as the vault of heaven itself. Lest we drown ourselves in that, let us hasten to some conclusion from our premises. Let us grasp even at a straw before we sink.

If the primer of astronomy proves anything it tells us that our earth is a mere atom in the universe. It gives us fair reason to believe that there are countless worlds, other than ours,