When we examine the assemblage of colors spread from the white ray of sunlight, we do not find red simple red, yellow yellow, etc., but there is a vast number of fine microscopic lines of various lengths, parallel—­here near together, there far apart, always the same number and the same relative distance, when the same light and prism are used.  What new alphabets to new realms of knowledge are these!  Remember, that what we call colors are only various numbers of vibrations of ether.  Remember, that every little group in the infinite variety of these vibrations may be affected differently from every other group.  One number of these is bent by the prism to where we see what we call the violet, another number to the place we call red.  All of the vibrations are destroyed when they strike a surface we call black.  A part of them are destroyed when [Page 29] they strike a substance we call colored.  The rest are reflected, and give the impression of color.  In one place on the flag of our nation all vibrations are destroyed except the red; in another, all but the blue.  Perhaps on that other gorgeous flag, not of our country but of our sun, the flag we call the solar spectrum, all vibrations are destroyed where these dark lines appear.  Perhaps this effect is not produced by the surface upon which the rays fall, but by some specific substance in the sun.  This is just the truth.  Light passing through vapor of sodium has the vibrations that would fall on two narrow lines in the yellow utterly destroyed, leaving two black spaces.  Light passing through vapor of burning iron has some four hundred numbers or kinds of vibrations destroyed, leaving that number of black lines; but if the salt or iron be glowing gas, in the source of the light itself the same lines are bright instead of dark.

Thus we have brought to our doors a readable record of the very substances composing every world hot enough to shine by its own light.  Thus, while our flag means all we have of liberty, free as the winds that kiss it, and bright as the stars that shine in it, the flag of the sun means all that it is in constituent elements, all that it is in condition.

We find in our sun many substances known to exist in the earth, and some that we had not discovered when the sun wrote their names, or rather made their mark, in the spectrum.  Thus, also, we find that Betelguese and Algol are without any perceivable indications of hydrogen, and Sirius has it in abundance.  What a sense of acquaintanceship it gives us to look up and recognize [Page 30] the stars whose very substance we know!  If we were transported thither, or beyond, we should not be altogether strangers in an unknown realm.

But the stars differ in their constituent elements; every ray that flashes from them bears in its very being proofs of what they are.  Hence the eye of Omniscience, seeing a ray of light anywhere in the universe, though gone from its source a thousand years, would be able to tell from what orb it originally came.