“In our flight across the vast void, the solar system is left behind as an island in space, and we find that we have traveled 250,000 times the radius of the earth’s orbit before we have reached the nearest fixed star, and from it no telescope yet invented could reveal a single one of the planets of our solar system. Stellar distances are so great that even astronomers find it impossible to handle the immense numbers, and consequently use the “light-year” as a unit of measurement, which is the distance that light travels in a year, or about 63,000 times the distance of the earth from the sun. From terrestrial experiences we have no conception of our distance from the sun, and can form but a faint idea by comparison. Charles A. Young, Professor of astronomy in Princeton University, says that an explosion on the sun would be heard by us about fourteen years after it actually occurred.
For years investigations have been made to discover whether our sun with its system of worlds is not circling around another grander center. Some astronomers imagine that they find evidences indicating that our system is moving in a circular orbit around the star Alcyon of the Pleiades. Others tell us that the solar system is flying through space at the rate of about eleven miles per second toward the constellation Hercules, as the stars comprising that constellation appear to be spreading out, as if we were approaching them. Again, an examination of the heavens shows the suns grouped together in galaxies, and there are evidences that these are in motion, but the distances are so immense that it is impossible for finite man to obtain positive knowledge of the order of their motion.
Flammarion says: “To a mind which had the power of abstracting itself from time and space, the earth, the planets, the suns, the stars would seem to be falling like drops of rain from the boundless sky, in every imaginable direction, like rain-drops whirled to and fro in the grasp of some cyclonic tempest and attracted, not by some solid base, but by the attractive force of each other and of them all; each one of these cosmic drops; each of these worlds, these suns, is hurried along at such a rate of speed that the flight of a cannon-ball is mere repose in comparison.”
But may not this flying, falling in all directions appear similar to a great number of wheels with arms extended and revolving in the same direction? To one standing at a distance, the arms would appear to be flying “in every imaginable direction” – while some were going east, others would be going west, while some were going up, others would be going down – in apparent confusion, yet at the same time revolving around their centers in perfect order. Such is the order of the solar system with its planets and their satellites, and we may reasonably believe that that is the order of the whole universe. That there is an order there can be no doubt, because, if these great bodies flying through space were not governed by law, they would soon be destroyed.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 