IV.

_CELESTIAL MEASUREMENTS._

We know that astronomy has what are called practical uses. If a
ship had been driven by Euroclydon ten times fourteen days and
nights without sun or star appearing, a moment's glance into the
heavens from the heaving deck, by a very slightly educated sailor,
would tell within one hundred yards where he was, and determine
the distance and way to the nearest port. We know that, in all
final and exact surveying, positions must be fixed by the stars.
Earth's landmarks are uncertain and easily removed; those which
we get from the heavens are stable and exact.

In 1878 the United States steam-ship _Enterprise_ was sent to survey
the Amazon. Every night a "star party" went ashore to fix the exact
latitude and longitude by observations of the stars. Our real landmarks
are not the pillars we rear, but the stars millions of miles away.
All our standards of time are taken from the stars; every railway
train runs by their time to avoid collision; by them all factories
start and stop. Indeed, we are ruled by the stars even more than
the old astrologers imagined.

Man's finest mechanism, highest thought, and broadest exercise
of the creative faculty have been inspired by astronomy. No other
instruments approximate in delicacy those which explore the heavens;
no other [Page 58] system of thought can draw such vast and certain
conclusions from its premises. "Too low they build who build beneath
the stars;" we should lay our foundations in the skies, and then
build upward.