Sect.  XVI.  Of Heaven.

It is time to lift up our eyes to heaven.  What power has built over our heads 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 globe for want of heat.  What pair of compasses, whose circumference encircles both heaven and earth, has fixed such just dimensions?  That star does no less befriend that part of the earth from which it removes, in order to temper it, than that it approaches to favour it with its beams.  Its kind, beneficent aspect fertilises all it shines upon.  This change produces