The Bible—Its Authority.

obligations , and promised obedience , but with all this done , he is not a Mason ; and a brother who knows of the existence of such a moral leper , claiming to be a Mason , should prefer charges against him , and , if found guilty , the Lodge should at once

purge the Temple of his contaminating presence . " Good enough . Let us act upon this suggestion . A brother who has so little regard for himself and the fraternity as to speak contemptuously of the Great Light

of Masonry , our spiritual and Masonic trestle-board , and before the brethren denounce it as a lie , let him be at once called to account , and dealt with as above . A few such examples would be wholesome .

Objects, Advantages, And Pleasures Of Science.

OBJECTS , ADVANTAGES , AND PLEASURES OF SCIENCE .

{ Continued from page 102 . ) THE Comets belong to the same system , according to this manner of viewing the subject . They are bodies which move in elliptical paths , but far longer and narrower

than the curves in which the . Earth and the other planets and their moons roll . Our curves are not much less round than circles ; the paths of the comets are long and narrow , so as , in many places , to be more nearly straight lines than circles . Formerly they were supposed to shine by

their own light ; but it is now considered pretty safe to conclude that they , like all other heavenly bodies in the Solar System , receive their light from the Sun ' s rays only . As they approach or recede from the Sun , they are more or less brilliant . The appendage called a tail being always

formed on that side of the nucleus most distant from the Sun , seems to show that it is an illumination produced by the Sun ' s rays . The discoveries lately made by the Spectroscope also tend to confirm this conjecture . The time of the revolution of

Comets in their orbits round the Sun , varies from three to several hundreds of our years . They , like our Earth and Moon , wheel round the Sun in boundless

space drawn by the same force , acting by the same rule which makes a stone fell when dropped from the hand . The more full and accurate our observations are upon those heavenly bodies , the better we find all their motions agreeing with this great doctrine ; although no

, doubt many things are to be taken into the account beside the force that draws them to the different centres . Thus , while the Moon is drawn by the Earth , and the Earth by the Sun , the Moon is also drawn directly by the Sun ; and while Jupiter is

drawn by the Sun , so are his moons ; and both Jupiter and his moons are drawn b y Saturn ; nay , as this power of gravitation is quite universal , and as no body can attract or draw another without beinsr itself drawn by that other , the Earth is

drawn by the Moon , while the Moon is drawn by the Earth ; and the Sun is attracted by the planets which he draws towards himself . These mutual attractions give rise to many deviations from the simple line of the ellipse , and produce many irregularities in the simple calculation of the times and motions of the bodies

that compose the System of the Universe . But the extraordinary powers of investigation applied to the subject by the modem improvements in Mathematics , have enabled us at length to reduce even the greatest of the irregularities to order and system ; and to unfold one of theimjst

wonderful truths in all science , namely , that by certain necessary consequences of the simple fact upon which the whole fabric rests—the proportion of the attractive force to the distances at which it

operates—all the irregularities which at first seemed to disturb the order of the system , and to make the apipearances depart from the doctrine , are themselves subject to a certain fixed rule , and can never go beyond a particular point , but must begin to lessen when they have slowly reached

that point , and must then lessen until they reach another point , when they beg in again to increase ; and so on for ever . Nay , so perfect is the arrangement of the whole system , and so accurately does i ' depend upon mathematical rinciles that

p p , irregularities , or rather apiparent deviations , have been discovered by matlie matical reasoning before astronomers had observed them , and then their existence