y-
one days, which was also the last of the year, would be XIX. xii. 29, as
on the Professors' permit.

I should like to explain here what will appear more clearly on a later
page--I mean, that the Erewhonians, according to their new system, do not
believe the sun to be a god except as regards this world and his other
planets. My father had told them a little about astronomy, and had
assured them that all the fixed stars were suns like our own, with
planets revolving round them, which were probably tenanted by intelligent
living beings, however unlike they might be to ourselves. From this they
evolved the theory that the sun was the ruler of this planetary system,
and that he must be personified, as they had personified the air-god, the
gods of time and space, hope, justice, and the other deities mentioned in
my father's book. They retain their old belief in the actual existence
of these gods, but they now make them all subordinate to the sun. The
nearest approach they make to our own conception of God is to say that He
is the ruler over all the suns throughout the universe--the suns being to
Him much as our planets and their denizens are to our own sun. They deny
that He takes more interest in one sun and its system than in another.
All the suns with their attendant planets are supposed to be equally His
children, and He deputes to each sun the supervision and protection of
its own system. Hence they say that though we may pray to the air-god,
&c., and even to the sun, we must not pray to God. We may be thankful to
Him for watching over the suns, but we must not go further.

Going back to my father's reflections, he perceived that the Erewhonians
had not only adopted our calendar, as he had repeatedly explained it to
the Nosnibors, but had taken our week as well, and were making Sunday a
high day, just as we do. Next Sunday, in commemoration of the twentieth
year after his ascent, they were about to dedicate a temple to him; in
this there was to be a picture showing himself and his earthly bride on
their heavenward journey, in a chariot drawn by four black and white
horses--which, however, Professor Hanky had positively affirmed to have
been only storks.

Here I interrupted my father. "But were there," I said, "any storks?"

"Yes," he answered. "As soon as I heard Hanky's words I remembered that
a flight of some four or five of the large storks so common in Erewhon
during the summer months had been wheelin