whose sake all Nature stands,
        And stars their courses move."

Do the stars, that are so far away and seem so small, send us any help? Assuredly. Nothing exists for itself. All is for man.

Magnetism tells the sailor which way he is going. Stars not only do this, when visible, but they also tell just where on the round globe he is. A glance into their bright eyes, from a rolling deck, by an uneducated sailor, aided by the tables of accomplished scholars, tells him exactly where he is--in mid Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, or Antarctic Ocean, or at the mouth of the harbor he has sought for months. We lift up our eyes higher than the hills. Help comes from the skies.

This help was started long since, with providential foresight and care. Is he steering by the North Star? A ray of guidance was sent from that lighthouse in the sky half a century before his need, that it might arrive just at the critical time. It has been ever since on its way.

The stars give us, on land and sea, all our reliable standards of time. There is no other source. They are reliable to the hundredth part of a second.

The Italian physicians, in their ignorance of the origin of a disease, named it the influenza, because they imagined that it came from the influence of the stars. No! There is nothing malign in the sweet influences of the Pleiades.

The stars are of special use as a mental gymnasium. On their lofty bars and trapezes the mind can swing itself higher and farther than on any other material thing. Infinity and omnipotence are factors in their problems. They also fill the soul of the rapt beholder with adoring wonder. They are the greatest symbols of the unweariableness of the power and of the minuteness of the knowledge of God. He calleth all their millions by name, and for the greatness of his power not one faileth to come.

Number the stars of a clear Eastern sky, if you are able. So multitudinous and enduring shall the influence of one good man be.

HELP FROM INSENSIBLE SEAS

Suppose one has been at sea a month. He has tacked to every point of the compass, been driven by gales, becalmed in doldrums. At length Euroclydon leaps on him, and he lets her drive. And when for many days and nights neither sun nor stars appear, how can he tell where he is, which way he drives, where the land lies?

There is an insensible ocean. No sense detects its presence. It has gulf streams that flow through us, storms whose waves engulf us, but we feel them not. There are various intensities of its power, the north end of the world not having half as much as the south. There are two places in the north half of the world that have greater intensity than the rest, and only one in the south. It looks as if there were unsoundable depths in some places and shoals in others.

The currents do not flow in exactly the same direction all the time, but their variations are within definite limits.

How shall we detect these steady currents when wind and waves are in tumultuous confusion? They are always present. No winds blow them aside, no waves drench their subtle fire, no mountains make them swerve. But how shall we find them?

Float a bit of magnetic ore in a pail of water, or suspend a bit of magnetized steel by a thread, and these currents make the ore or needle point north and south. Now let waves buffet either side, typhoons roar, and maelstroms whirl; we have, out of the invisible, insensible sea of magnetic influence, a sure and steady guide. Now we can sail out of sight of headlands. We have in the darkness and light, in calm and storm, an unswerving guide. Now Columbus can steer for any new world.

Does not this seem like a spiritual force? Lodestone can impart its qualities to hard steel without the impairment of its own power. There is a giving that does not impoverish, and a withholding that does not enrich.

Wherever there is need there is supply. The proper search with appropriate faculties will find it. There are yet more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.

THE FAIRY GRAVITATION

The Germans imagine that they have fairy kobolds, sprites, and gnomes which play under ground and haunt mines. I know a real one. I will give you his name. It is called "Gravitation." The name does not sound any more fairylike than a sledge hammer, but its nature and work are as fairylike as a spider's web. I will give samples of his helpful work for man.

In the mountains about Saltzburg, south of Munich, are great thick beds of solid salt. How can they get it down to the cities where it is needed? Instead of digging it out, and packing it on the backs of mules for forty miles, they turn in a stream of water and make a little lake which absorbs very much salt--all it can carry. Then they lay a pipe, like a fairy railroad, and gravitation carries the salt water gently and swiftly forty miles, to where the railroads can take it everywhere. It goes so easily! There is no railroad to build, no car to haul back, only to stand still and see gravitation do the work.

How do they get the salt and water apart? O, just as easily. They ask the wind to help them. They cut brush about four feet long, and pile it up twenty feet high and as long as they please. Then a pipe with holes in it is laid along the top, the water trickles down all over the loose brush, and the thirsty wind blows through and drinks out most of the water. They might let on the water so slowly that all of it would be drunk out by the wind, leaving the solid salt on the bushes. But they do not want it there. So they turn on so much water that the thirsty wind can drink only the most of it, and the rest drops down into great pans, needing only a little evaporation by boiling to become beautiful salt again, white as the snows of December.

There are other minerals besides salt in the beds in the mountains, and, being soluble in water, they also come down the tiny railroad with musical laughter. How can we separate them, so that the salt shall be pure for our tables?

The other minerals are less avaricious of water than salt, so they are precipitated, or become solid, sooner than salt does. Hence with nice care the other minerals can be left solid on the bushes, while the salt brine falls off. Afterward pure water can be turned on and these other minerals can be washed off in a solution of their own. No fairies could work better than those of solution and crystallization.

MORE GRAVITATION

At Hutchinson, Kan., there are great beds of solid rock salt four hundred feet below the surface. Men want to get and use two thousand barrels a day. How shall they get it to the top of the ground? They might dig a great well--or, as the miners say, sink a shaft--pump out the water, go down and blast out the salt, and laboriously haul it up in defiance of gravitation. No; that is too hard. Better ask this strong gravitation to bring it up.

But does it work down and up? Did any one ever know of gravitation raising anything? O yes, many things. A balloon may weigh as much as a ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the heavier air flows down under and shoulders it up. When a heavy weight and a light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because gravity acts more on the other. Water poured down a long tube will rise if the tube is bent up into a shorter arm.

Exactly. So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an iron tube.

We do not care about the water. It is no bother. Then inside of this tube we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher. Now pour water down the small longer tube. It saturates itself with salt, and comes flowing over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down hill. Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two thousand barrels of