so vast and so magnificent an arch? What a stupendous
variety of admirable objects is here? It is, no doubt, to present
us with a noble spectacle that an Omnipotent Hand has set before our
eyes so great and so bright objects. It is in order to raise our
admiration of heaven, says Tully, that God made man unlike the rest
of animals. He stands upright, and lifts up his head, that he may
be employed about the things that were above him. Sometimes we see
a duskish azure sky, where the purest fires twinkle. Sometimes we
behold, in a temperate heaven, the softest colours mixed with such
variety as it is not in the power of painting to imitate. Sometimes
we see clouds of all shapes and figures, and of all the brightest
colours, which every moment shift that beautiful decoration by the
finest accidents and various effects of light. What does the
regular succession of day and night denote? For so many ages as are
past the sun never failed serving men, who cannot live without it.
Many thousand years are elapsed, and the dawn never once missed
proclaiming the approach of the day. It always begins precisely at
a certain moment and place. The sun, says the holy writ, knows
where it shall set every day. By that means it lights, by turns,
the two hemispheres, or sides of the earth, and visits all those for
whom its beams are designed. The day is the time for society and
labour; the night, wrapping up the earth with its shadow, ends, in
its turn, all manner of fatigue and alleviates the toil of the day.
It suspends and quiets all; and spreads silence and sleep
everywhere. By refreshing the bodies it renews the spirits. Soon
after day returns to summon again man to labour and revive all
nature.

SECT. XVII. Of the Sun.

But besides the constant course by which the sun forms days and
nights it makes us sensible of another, by which for the space of
six months it approaches one of the poles, and at the end of those
six months goes back with equal speed to visit the other pole. This
excellent order makes one sun sufficient for the whole earth. If it
were of a larger size at the same distance, it would set the whole
globe on fire and the earth would be burnt to ashes; and if, at the
same distance, it were lesser, the earth would be all over frozen
and uninhabitable. Again, if in the same magnitude it were nearer
us, it would set us in flames; and if more remote, we should not be
able to live on the terrestrial glo