There are two schemes of religious thought generically in the world, as there has been—and are now to some extent—two systems of astronomical speculation, one obtaining in uncivilized countries, and the other in civilized. One system of astronomical speculation takes the earth as the center around which the heavens revolve. That seems according to our senses; that is the architecture of the heavens according to the natural man. When the Rev. Mr. Jasper, at Richmond, insists that “the sun do move,” he seems to have the judgment and the sense of every seeing man with him. [Laughter.] And we know what comes of it,—uninterpreted and unintelligible and contradictory motions in all the sky; a baffled heaven scribbled o’er with cycle and epicycle. The other system of astronomical speculation takes its start from the sun as the center and the governor of the planetary system, and finds that sun himself, with all his dependent orbs, marching onward through the heavens. And we know what comes of that. (There came a book from Dr. Hill, years ago, which I read with the intensest interest, concerning the relation of the stars.) [Applause.] There comes order and harmony in all the system of the heavens. We measure and weigh the planet in its course. The astronomer catches the comet in its far flight, measures its motion and predicts its course and its return. The butterfly floating in the air is balanced against the sun. Every shell on the beach, every bud on the tree, is brought into relation with the farthest nebula whose lace-work stains the distant azure. It is the astronomy of science; it is the astronomy of advanced and cultivated thought.