When the sun is said “to rule over the day,” it is intimated that he acts as the vicegerent of the Almighty, who has invested him with a mechanical power of giving light, life and motion to all the beings susceptible of receiving impressions from his radiance. As the servant of his creator he distributes blessings without number among all the tribes of sentient and intelligent existence. When his rays illumine the eastern sky in the morning, all nature is enlivened with his presence. When he sinks beneath the western horizon, the flowers droop, the birds retire to their nests, and a mantle of darkness is spread over the landscape of the world. When he approaches the equinox in spring, the animal and vegetable tribes revive, and nature puts on a new and a smiling aspect. When he declines towards the winter solstice, dreariness and desolation ensue, and a temporary death takes place among the tribes of the vegetable world.--This splendid luminary, whose light embellishes the whole of this lower creation, forms the most lively representation of Him who is the source and the centre of all beauty and perfection. “God is a sun,” the sun of the moral and spiritual universe, from whom all the emanations of knowledge, love and felicity descend. “He covereth himself with light as with a garment.” and “dwells in light inaccessible and full of glory.” The felicity and enjoyments of the future world are adumbrated under the ideas of _light_ and _glory_. “The glory of God enlightens the celestial city,” its inhabitants are represented as “the saints _in light_,” it is declared that “their _sun_ shall no more go down,” and that “the Lord God is their _everlasting light_.” So that light not only cheers and enlivens all beings throughout the material creation, but is the emblem of the Eternal Mind, and of all that is delightful and transporting in the scenes of a blessed immortality.