contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s?  To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth’s equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis.  In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all!  We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the “Adepts” are aware.

Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the “central mass of the sun” whirling out into space planets, comets, and whatnot.  Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain:  that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as the “Universal Life-giver,” the one life gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos.

What are the proofs of science?  The solar spots (a misnomer, like much of the rest)?  But these do not prove the solidity of the “central mass,” any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the atmosphere behind them.  Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun’s body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said “body” appearing “a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?” We say that there is indeed a “prisoner” behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical, mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic reflection, an illusive phantasma of “solar appendages of some sort,” as Mr. Proctor honestly calls it.  Before saying anything further, we will consider the next interrogatory.

Question ii.—­Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?

Such is the accepted theory of modern science:  it is not what the “Adepts” teach.  The former says—­the sun “derives no important accession of heat from without:”—­the latter answer—­“the sun needs it not.”  He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come.