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The motion of the earth in a given orbit round the sun, is a series of changes which follow one another as antecedents and consequents, and will continue to do so while the sun’s attraction, and the force with which the earth tends to advance in a direct line through space, continue to co-exist in the same quantities as at present.

Rip tapped gloved fingers on his helmet absently. If they could blast out of the orbit and drive into the sun ... he estimated the result. A few miles per second of extra speed would put them so far within the sun’s field of gravity that, within an hour or so, small boats would venture into space only at their peril. He reviewed the equipment.

If no bounty of rain descends from heaven upon the soil, if no heat of the sun penetrates, it will remain black, forbidding, unproductive; but when the moistening shower and the effulgent glow of the sun’s rays fall upon it, beautiful and redolent flowers grow from its bosom.

It was so still and quiet in that forest that the silence seemed to hurt my ears and I found myself listening to see if I could not hear the deep dark blue blossoms of the fringed gentians whispering scandals about the flaming Indian paint brushes that flourished in the opening in the woods where the sun’s ray could reach and warm the dark earth.

We observed nothing extraordinary with respect to the sun’s light about the shortest day; but as early as the 20th of November Arcturus could very plainly be distinguished by the naked eye, when near the south meridian at noon.

The hardy traveller wanders through the maze of thick and pathless woods, where the sun’s rays never shone, and heaven’s pure air never played; he stands on the brink of the roaring waterfall, and, giddy and bewildered, watches the foaming mass as it leaps from stone to stone, and from crag to crag; he lingers in the fertile plains of a land of perpetual sunshine, and revels in the luxury of their balmy breath.

It is very long after the sun’s reappearance in these regions, however, that the effect of his rays, as to warmth, becomes perceptible; week passes after week with scarcely any rise in the thermometer except for an hour or two during the day; and it is at this period more than any other, perhaps, that the lengthened duration of a polar winter’s cold is most wearisome, and creates the most impatience.

A mediator is necessary between man and the Creatorone who receives the full light of the Divine Splendor and radiates it over the human world, as the earth’s atmosphere receives and diffuses the warmth of the sun’s rays. If we wish to pray, we must have some object on which to concentrate. If we turn to God, we must direct our hearts to a certain center.

Here too wilt thou behold the Sun’s rays shed upon them, clearly visible within them, and manifested by them. Shouldst thou, however, turn thy gaze unto a Mirror, brilliant, stainless, and pure, wherein the divine Beauty is reflected, therein wilt thou find the Sun shining with Its rays, Its heat, Its disc, Its fair form all entire.

The sun’s action, and the original impelling force, might have been in such a ratio to one another, that the reaction of the effect would have been such as to alter the causes more and more, without ever bringing them back to what they were at any former time. The planet would then have moved in a parabola, or an hyperbola, curves not returning into themselves.