Page:The Universe, a poem - Baker (1727).djvu/22

And can those everlasting Founts of Light,
Bodies immensely vast! divinely bright!
Serve for no End at all?———or, but to blaze
Through empty Space, and useless spend their Rays?

Consult with Reason. Reason will reply,
^[1]Each lucid Point which glows in yonder Sky,
Informs a System in the boundless Space,
And fills, with Glory, its appointed Place:

with

1. That each fixed Star we see is a Sun, round which a Set of Planets take their regular Courses, and are from thence enlighten'd, as those of our System are by our Sun, is an Opinion now so generally agreed to by the learned World, that it is almost needless to endeavour its Defence. They shine by their own Light 'tis certain: since 'tis not possible the Light of the Sun should be sent to them, and transmitted again to Us. For the Sun's Rays would be so dissipated, before they reached such remote Objects, that the best Eyes in the World could not thereby discover them. We see, for all his Bulk, how faintly Saturn shines in respect of the fixed Stars; and yet his Distance from the Sun is but a Point compar'd with that of the nearest of them. Their Distance is so immense, that the best Telescopes shew them but as meer Points, instead of magnifying them, as they do any Objects within a measurable Distance, how great soever. Mr. Huygens computes, that the Sun's Distance from the Earth, to the Distance of the nearest fixed Star, is as 1 to 27664: according to which, the nearest fixed Star is distant from Us, at least 2,404,520,928,000 Miles. A Cannon-Ball would spend almost 700,000 Years in passing through this Space, even with the same Velocity it goes from the Cannon's Mouth.
   Then, since the fixed Stars are at such immense Distances, and shine by their own Light, 'tis plain they must be Bodies like our Sun in Size and Glory. Nor are they all placed in one concave Surface of the same Sphere, and equally distant from Us; but spread every where through the indefinite Expanse, and as far from

one