After a few observations on the subject of discipline, you give to your audience a kind of lecture on astronomy. Had you confined yourself to recalling to their recollection the wonderful harmony in the works of the Almighty, it would not have been incongruous; but to enter into a long dissertation on the sun, moon, and stars, and on vacuum and unmeasured space, was neither adapted to the place or company. It was no doubt quite new and entertaining to such of them as had never read the elementary treatises in use in some of our schools; and it is certainly the most sublime of all sciences, and that in which the powers of the human mind have been displayed in the greatest degree; yet I cannot think you were judicious in selecting a Quaker meeting as a proper theatre for the display of your talents, nor can I believe that your ingenuity can make any application of the facts you have stated to the subject of your discourse. You tell us that the sun, although it emits so much light, never lessens; that there is harmonious and social commune between the heavenly bodies;[19] that the earth, if kept too long in the cold, would grow heavier, and falling from its proper place, derange the other bodies; that the moon has a great effect upon our globe, &c. &c. The moon, we know, is thought by many to have a considerable influence on the imaginations of men in certain situations, but I never heard that such influence had any effect in producing good order and discipline, and no one supposes that the rays of the sun can throw any light upon the subject. Besides you ought to have recollected that you were subjecting yourself to the charge of ingratitude; for surely the men of science must think you ungrateful in availing yourself so largely of those labours, which you have endeavoured to persuade your friends are a curse to mankind.[20] Footnote 19: This information, I must acknowledge, is an exception to the generality of my assertion, for I do not believe it is contained in any of the elementary books I have mentioned; nor do I think it can be found in the writings of either Newton or Herschell, or that either of them, although so long engaged in examining the planetary system, were so fortunate as to observe any of these bodies at the moment when they were engaged in these friendly conversations. Perhaps the author has been led into a mistake by some obstruction in his glass, like a celebrated member of the Royal Society, who announced the discovery of an elephant in the moon, which, on examination, was found to be only a mouse in his telescope. Footnote 20: Sermons, page 53 and 55.