‘Hail holy light! offspring of heaven first born, Or of the eternal co-eternal beam! May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. ----Before the sun Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, did’st invest The rising world of waters dark and deep Won from the void and formless infinite.’ As light is an element of so much importance and utility in the system of nature, so we find that arrangements have been made for its universal diffusion throughout all the worlds in the universe. The sun is one of the principal sources of light to this earth on which we dwell, and to all the other planetary bodies. And, in order that it may be _equally_ distributed over every portion of the surfaces of these globes, to suit the exigencies of their inhabitants, they are endowed with a motion of rotation, by which every part of their surfaces is alternately turned towards the source of light; and when one hemisphere is deprived of the direct influence of the solar rays, its inhabitants derive a portion of light from luminaries in more distant regions, and have their views directed to other suns and systems dispersed, in countless numbers, throughout the remote spaces of the universe. Around several of the planets, satellites, or moons, have been arranged for the purpose of throwing light on their surfaces in the absence of the sun, while at the same time the primary planets themselves reflect an effulgence of light upon their satellites. All the stars which our unassisted vision can discern in the midnight sky, and the millions more which the telescope alone enables us to descry, must be considered as so many fountains of light, not merely to illuminate the voids of immensity, but to irradiate with their beams surrounding worlds with which they are more immediately connected, and to diffuse a general lustre throughout the amplitudes of infinite space. And, therefore, we have every reason to believe, that, could we fly, for thousands of years, with the swiftness of a seraph, through the spaces of immensity, we should never approach a region of absolute darkness, but should find ourselves, every moment encompassed with the emanations of light, and cheered with its benign influences. That Almighty Being who inhabiteth immensity and “dwells in light inaccessible,” evidently appears to have diffused light over the remotest spaces of his creation, and to have thrown a radiance upon all the provinces of his wide and eternal empire, so that every intellectual being, wherever existing, may feel its beneficent effects, and be enabled, through its agency, to trace his wonderful operations, and the glorious attributes with which he is invested.