fiery ball, so that his beams can fall upon us.

Take a small globe, and stick a piece of black plaster over
England, then let a lighted lamp represent the sun, and turn the
globe slowly, so that the spot creeps round from the dark side
away from the lamp, until it catches, first the rays which pass
along the side of the globe, then the more direct rays, and at
last stands fully in the blaze of the light. Just this was
happening to our spot of the world as you lay in bed and saw the
light appear; and we have to learn today what those beams are
which fall upon us and what they do for us.

First we must learn something about the sun itself, since it is
the starting-place of all the sunbeams. If the sun were a dark
mass instead of a fiery one we should have none of these bright
cheering messengers, and though we were turned face to face with
him every day we should remain in one cold eternal night. Now
you will remember we mentioned in the last lecture that it is
heat which shakes apart the little atoms of water and makes them
gloat up in the air to fall again as rain; and that if the day is
cold they fall as snow, and all the water is turned into ice.
But if the sun were altogether dark, think how bitterly cold it
would be; far colder than the most wintry weather ever known,
because in the bitterest night some warmth comes out of the
earth, where it has been stored from the sunlight which fell
during the day. But if we never received any warmth at all, no
water would ever rise up into the sky, no rain ever fall, no
rivers flow, and consequently no plants could grow and no animals
live. All water would be in the form of snow and ice, and the
earth would be one great frozen mass with nothing moving upon it.