Lectures to my students - Spurgeon - XXXII - Chapter 7 (The sciences as sources of illustration) concluded

Required reading
Lectures to my students by Charles Spurgeon (Available from Amazon or free here) - Conclude Chapter 7 (The sciences as sources of illustration).  Note, we won't be reading the Appendix A 'Books of Anecdotes...' and Appendix B 'Spurgeon's books of illustrations...'

My summary
Today Spurgeon finishes demonstrating that sermons can be illustrated with facts of astronomy.

Spurgeon gives examples of sermon illustrations from facts about:
(i) Mercury;
(ii) Venus;
(iii) the Earth;
(iv) the Moon;
(v) Mars;
(vi) Asteroids;
(vii) Jupiter;
(viii) Saturn;
(ix) Uranus;
(x) Neptune;
(xi) Comets;
(xii) Stars.

What grabbed me
This comment from Spurgeon was intriguing: 'The nearest planet that revolves around the sun is Mercury, which is about 37,000,000 miles from the great luminary. Mercury, therefore, receives a far greater allowance of light and heat from the sun than comes to us upon the earth. It is believed that, even at the poles of Mercury, water would always boil ; that is to say, if the planet is constituted at all as this world is. None of us could possibly live there ; but that is no reason why other people should not, for God could make some of his creatures to live in the fire just as well as he could make others to live out of it. I have no doubt that, if there are inhabitants there, they enjoy the heat. In a spiritual sense, at any rate, we know that men who live near to Jesus dwell in the divine flame of love.'

Did Spurgeon believe in the existence of aliens?

Next week's reading
Commence Discussions (Vol 2) by Robert L. Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here) by reading 'Uses and results of church history'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.