But what I specially want to speak of for a moment is the number of these heavenly bodies, and their distance from us.
In the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, two verses are placed close together, the one speaking of the power and greatness of God, the other of His tenderness and compassion towards His creatures.
"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds."
"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by names."
And in the Book of Job we read—
"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!"
There are wonderful things to learn about the colour of the stars, some yellow like our own sun, others of a dazzling whiteness, and others giving out beautiful rainbow-coloured light. But these wonders you must study by-and-by; just now we will speak first of their amazing number, as they appear to our eyes when by the help of the telescope we peer deeper and deeper into the blue depths of the sky. When alluding to the stars in a general way we include the seven planets—one of them our own earth—which move round our sun, and are as it were so near home that five of them may be seen without the telescope—though not more than three are visible at the same time—and also those myriads of "fixed stars," all of which are suns, many of them much larger than our own glorious sun, and removed from our ken by distances which our minds refuse to grasp.
I have been told that the number of stars which can be seen with the naked eye is five thousand, but that only half that number are visible at the same time.
If you ask me how many can be seen with the help of the telescope, I cannot tell you, because more powerful glasses are constantly being made, only to discover worlds beyond worlds, ever new and more distant, strewn in space like golden dust, while stars hitherto invisible through the most powerful telescope can now be made to leave the impress of their rays upon the photographic plate—so that a great astronomer of our time can show us pictures of "invisible stars."
God who made them, God who has appointed to each its own path through the heavens, and also guides and controls each world and system of worlds in its course, so that in all His universe there is no jar, no clash, no being before or after time—He alone can tell their number.