The planets are so conspicuous to our eyes, because of their relative nearness, that it is not easy for the beginner in such studies to realize how insignificant they actually are. But suppose that one could fly like a spirit away from the earth and the neighborhood of the sun, out into the deeps of interstellar space. As he moved away the planets would seem to be swallowed up, one after the other, in the solar rays. First Mercury would disappear, as if it had fallen into the sun. It would be just like two neighboring lights which appear to draw together and blend into one as the observer travels away from them, the greater swallowing the less. Then brilliant Venus would go, plunging into the great solar furnace, to be seen no more. Next the earth would follow in the perspective holocaust. Mars would seem to draw nearer until he, too, disappeared; Jupiter would follow; then Saturn; then Uranus, and finally Neptune. When the last planet was gone the sun would be seen shining alone, unattended, as if he had never had any planets. Thus it may be with the stars; most of them may have systems of planets circling round them, but at our distance these planets are concealed in the rays of their primaries. One would not need to go so far away as the stars in order to see the sun apparently swallow his planets, as Saturn was fabled to have swallowed his children. But as one approached the stellar region, the sun itself would become a mere star. Fainter and fainter it appears, glimmering and twinkling, deprived of its dominance, stripped of its splendor, a pitiful spark now instead of an all-ruling and blinding maker of daylight, until at last the far voyager from the earth, gazing with his soul in his eyes, straining his vision to the utmost to hold that glinting point clear of its fellows, _for it is his sun_, suddenly, as a momentary film blurs his sight, loses it, and henceforth seek as he may among the countless hosts that spangle the firmament, he will never again find the day-star under whose cheery beams he was born! Hidden in the Milky Way, one would have no more chance of recognizing the sun than of finding a particular grain of sand on the sea-shore. Man physical is as insignificant as the rock he dwells on and as the eye-searing orb that lights him at his daily work; but man spiritual is as great as the universe--and greater! APPENDIX URANOGRAPHY OR HEAVENLY DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCHMEN