But if one had a very good telescope, and could examine those more distant specks of light which we call stars, we perhaps could spy a little earlier into the history of these great balls. For example, among the blazing lights of the heavens--the stars which we know to be suns--there are others which are not balls at all. There are the Pleiades, for instance, of whom the Prophet Amos wrote, "Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion" (Amos v. 8). The seven stars (in the Authorised Version rendered Pleiades),[4] when seen through a great telescope, are caught in a mesh or a veil of something that may be starry matter, but of the exact nature of which we are uncertain. In other parts of the sky there are great masses of this starry mist; and to these bright patches astronomers have given the name of "nebulæ." The most wonderful of them all is the great nebula in Orion;[5] and one of the most beautiful is the great spiral nebula of Andromeda. These objects are not only wonderful and beautiful; they also give us a hint as to what might have been the earliest state of our earth, and of the Sun itself in those almost inconceivably distant ages before order took the place of chaos. [Footnote 4: It has been cogently suggested that by the "seven stars" the biblical writer meant the constellation of the Great Bear; but Mr. E. W. Maunder, F.R.A.S., of Greenwich Observatory, is of opinion that the Pleiades were signified.] [Footnote 5: "God maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south" (Job IX. 9).]