A Few Thoughts Concerning the Heavens
By Susie Sisley
THE sun seems vastly superior to any other body in the heavens. Compare him with our most brilliant star! It would take twenty thousand million stars like Sirius to equal in brilliancy the light of our sun. Is this just judgment? Have we here the true relative importance of the sun and stars? Are we in a position to judge impartially? The truth is that the sun is one million times nearer us than is Sirius. Ninety-three million miles, the distance between us and the sun, is as nothing! Sun is near! Why, the sun so dazzles in our faces that we have to shade our eyes with night before we can even catch the faintest glimmering of Sirius a million times farther away. Reversing the position and viewing the sun from Sirius, which is only fair, alas! how our good sun dwindles. Now we see ourselves as others see us. Sun appears the size of a half-penny sixteen hundred miles away, and earth is proportionately indistinguishable, and but for our own brother-planets with whom it would seem that we can touch hands, however staggering their distance may have seemed, this is the universal light in which we are viewed. Our whole family—Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—together appear as one faint star in the Milky Way, the sheen of whose galaxy is due to the fact that it is composed of millions of such “closely packed” faint stars. Each one of these faint stars holds equal right with our sun to the control of a system of planets (it may be larger than ours). Yes, eighteen million worlds in a single system, and systems beyond count! A cardinal truth, then, in astronomy is, “Sun is no more than a star, and the stars are no less than suns.” While we speak of the stars as being “fixed,” they are really moving through space at a high rate of speed, though at such a distance from us that we can scarcely distinguish it. For example, Arcturus has not appeared to have moved more than over one moon’s breadth during our era, but in truth he has been traveling, and carrying all his worlds with him, at the rate of four hundred miles every second. Surely the Hand that guides earth, and Arcturus, 11,500,000 x 140,000 x 93,000,000 miles distant, is not shortened that it can not save. For all they are so crowded, “closely packed,” this condition is not real. Sun with his sons, and his sons’ sons, a fairly well-regulated family, has ample room for harmonious action, with modest seclusion also. Their nearest neighbor is twenty-five million of million miles away. Thus our system owns an allotment in space of fifty million of million miles broad, which is intruded upon by no body, unless perhaps by a stray comet. The solar system in space has as much room as a raft a few yards square would have in the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and America. In the light of the stars, then, we shrivel to a point. Surely here is a cure for the most over-self-esteemed,—the man who walks as if he owned the earth. What if he does, that is not much. There are worlds besides. Suppose he has traveled the earth around, can he boast of much travel when he has not visited the nearest star, or even a next-door planet? The richest man on earth has not money enough to purchase a ticket to the nearest station in starland (fare to Alpha Centauri $5,500,000,000, at the rate of two cents a hundred miles). Owned he all the Bank of England, yes, all the money on earth, he would still have to give up the trip for lack of means. The happiest man of leisure can not spare the time to make the journey (at the rate of sixty miles an hour,—48,663,000 years). But while the study of astronomy is an effective cure for this ailment of mankind, paradoxical as it may seem, it is an equally good cure for the opposite. The humblest man on earth, who attracts the least notice, holds equal distinction with his fellows among the stars. Earth is the most distinguished body in the heavens. All the teeming millions have not caused the All-father such concern, none cost so much. Its position is unique. All eyes are upon it. Earth is the battle ground of a controversy of eternal consequences,—consequences so great that when the victory is won, proving to the waiting world that God the maker is God and love, as monument of this victory to stand on the battle field itself the whole New Jerusalem is placed, and God, who “inhabiteth eternity,” whom “the heaven of heavens can not contain,” says of earth, “This is home.” Meanwhile God goes on with the operation of his hands, “guiding Arcturus, binding the sweet influences of Pleiades and Orion,” each in his place yielding perfect obedience to his will, each influencing every other to likewise walk in his ways. Which is easier, for God to control ten thousand million worlds, or one wayward heart? It is only this that dares and can baffle his power. Knowing Arcturus, seeing him “night unto night,” can we not look up and say—
“He who from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will guide my steps aright”?
SUSIE SISLEY.