On the 1st day of September, 1859, two astronomers, independently of each other, saw a sudden brightening on the surface of the sun. Probably two large meteoric masses were travelling side by side at two or three hundred miles per second, and striking the sun's atmosphere, suddenly blazed into light bright enough to be seen on the intolerable light of the photosphere as a background. The earth responded to this new cause of brilliance and heat in the sun. Vivid auroras appeared, not only at the north and south poles, but even where such spectacles are seldom seen. The electro-magnetic [Page 20] disturbances were more distinctly marked. "In many places the telegraphic wires struck work. In Washington and Philadelphia the electric signalmen received severe electric shocks; at a station in Norway the telegraphic apparatus was set fire to; and at Boston a flame of fire followed the pen of Bain's electric telegraph." There is the best of reason for believing that a continuous succession of such bodies might have gone far toward rendering the earth uncomfortable as a place of residence. Of course, the same result of heat and light would follow from compression, if a body had the power of contraction in itself. We endowed every particle of our gas, myriads of miles in extent, with an attraction for every other particle. It immediately compressed itself into a light-giving body, which flamed out through the interstellar spaces, flushing all the celestial regions with exuberant light. But heat exerts a repellent force among particles, and soon an equilibrium is reached, for there comes a time when the contracting body can contract no farther. But heat and light radiate away into cold space, then contraction goes on evolving more light, and so the suns flame on through the millions of years unquenched. It is estimated that the contraction of our sun, from filling immensity of space to its present size, could not afford heat enough to last more than 18,000,000 years, and that its contraction from its present density (that of a swamp) to such rock as that of which our earth is composed, could supply heat enough for 17,000,000 years longer. But the far-seeing mind of man knows a time must come when the present force of attraction [Page 21] shall have produced all the heat it can, and a new force of attraction must be added, or the sun itself will become cold as a cinder, dead as a burned-out char.