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Page 24
[Page 75]
V.
THE SUN.
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and
the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also."--_Gen._
i. 16.
[Page 76]
"It is perceived that the sun of the world, with all its essence,
which is heat and light, flows into every tree, and into every
shrub and flower, and into every stone, mean as well as precious;
and that every object takes its portion from this common influx,
and that the sun does not divide its light and heat, and dispense
a part to this and a part to that. It is similar with the sun of
heaven, from which the Divine love proceeds as heat, and the Divine
wisdom as light; these two flow into human minds, as the heat and
light of the sun of the world into bodies, and vivify them according
to the quality of the minds, each of which takes from the common
influx as much as is necessary."--SWEDENBORG.
[Page 77]
V.
_THE SUN._
Suppose we had stood on the dome of Boston Statehouse November 9th,
1872, on the night of the great conflagration, and seen the fire
break out; seen the engines dash through the streets, tracking their
path by their sparks; seen the fire encompass a whole block, leap
the streets on every side, surge like the billows of a storm-swept
sea; seen great masses of inflammable gas rise like dark clouds
from an explosion, then take fire in the air, and, cut off from
the fire below, float like argosies of flame in space. Suppose we
had felt the wind that came surging from all points of the compass
to fan that conflagration till it was light enough a mile away to
see to read the finest print, hot enough to decompose the torrents
of water that were dashed on it, making new fuel to feed the flame.
Suppose we had seen this spreading fire seize on the whole city,
extend to its environs, and, feeding itself on the very soil, lick
up Worcester with its tongues of flame--Albany, New York, Chicago,
St. Louis, Cincinnati--and crossing the plains swifter than a prairie
fire, making each peak of the Rocky Mountains hold up aloft a separate
torch of flame, and the Sierras whiter with heat than they ever were
with snow, the waters of the Pacific resolve into their constituent
elements of oxygen and hydrogen, and [Page 78] burn with
unquenchable fire! We withdraw into the air, and see below a world
on fire. All the prisoned powers have burst into intensest activity.
Quiet breezes have become furious tempests. Look around this flaming
globe--on fire above, below, around--there is nothing but fire. Let
it roll beneath us till Boston comes round again. No ember has yet
cooled, no spire of flame has shortened, no surging cloud has been
quieted. Not only are the mountains still in flame, but other ranges
burst up out of the seething sea. There is no place of rest, no
place not tossing with raging flame! Yet all this is only a feeble
figure of the great burning sun. It is but the merest hint, a
million times too insignificant.
The sun appears small and quiet to us because we are so far away.
Seen from the various planets, the relative size of the sun appears
as in Fig. 30. Looked for from some of the stars about us, the
sun could not be seen at all. Indeed, seen from the earth, it is
not always the same size, because the distance is not always the
same. If we represent the size of the sun by one thousand on the
23d of September or 21st of March, it would be represented by nine
hundred and sixty-seven on the 1st of July, and by one thousand
and thirty-four on the 1st of January.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Relative Size of Sun as seen from Different
Planets.]
We sometimes speak of the sun as having a diameter of 860,000 miles.
We mean that that is the extent of the body as soon by the eye.
But that is a small part of its real diameter. So we say the earth
has an equatorial diameter of 7925-1/2 miles, and a polar one of
7899. But the air is as much a part of the earth as the rocks are.
The electric currents are as much a part of the [Page 79] earth as
the ores and mountains they traverse. What the diameter of the earth
is, including these, no man can tell. We used to say the air
extended forty-five miles, but we now know that it reaches vastly
farther. So of the sun, we might almost say that its diameter is
infinite, for its light and heat reach beyond our measurement. Its
living, throbbing heart sends out pulsations, keeping all space full
of its tides of living light.
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