depths where are signs of as yet unthought of laws. "I shall maintain it all my life, whoever says in his heart there is no God, and makes use of a different language, is either a liar or a madman." 1 Scripture holds closely to mundane affairs, yet the very ground on which religion and morality are based, is that we move in a wider circle than the physical; that spiritual beings, good and evil, enter our firmament, concern themselves with the destiny of our race; and that we, after a rational service in duty and trial, shall enter a vast congregation of pure spirits who are further within the circle of Divine Power, and nearer to the manifestation of Divine Glory. Meanwhile, God guides us by His hand, and in His heart has sympathy. Life's trials cast down, but not destroy; lightning may rend the firmament, yet awake no fear; and sickness, touching our body with premonition of the grave, brings conviction that we shall live again. Like the suns. and stars, kindled into splendour from previous worlds, our restored spirits, with frames purified and refashioned, will evermore live on, and find starry pathway to the Eternal Throne. Thoughtful men studying the Sun's Path through Space, Rule, Physical Constitution, Age, Origin, receive a deep impression that the Divine account, the simplest in the world is not vague nor indefinite; but startling, grand, abrupt. The appearance corresponds to our limited aspect of Nature, words and times agree with our ignorance and mortality, but possess an inner spirit revealing powers of the world to come. Marvellously strange! The pomp of heaven is made a plea for clothing the earth with poor garments, and the Father's boundless wealth a reason that we should expect nothing. Forgetting that if a narrative, like that of Scripture, bristling with apparent contradictions, startling and bold in a sturdy contempt of confidence in human will and wisdom, is found to agree with accurate science, the Book must be of God; an attempt is made to turn God's greatness against us. We are asked " Of what consequence can men, their pleasures or their pains, be to Him in whose sight all the worlds our 1 Rousseau, "Emilius," vol. ii. p. 230. Littleness and Greatness. 233 eye can see are less than a speck in infinite space?" Those who charge the Bible with narrowness pervert the splendour of God into a plea that He is too great to love mankind. The Being whom they profess to hallow is made less wise, less good, less wonderful, by the assertion that He cannot and will not visit us. Why should our reason be less firm in structure, or analogy concerning this be entitled to less confidence, than when we consider smaller things? If the incalculable multiplication of worlds, and the necessities of a rule that is infinite, hinder not the fashioning of a moth's wing so that it possess a very firmament of beauty; why should not the All-good and Holy devise a plan for rendering us good and holy, in a manner far exceeding human thought as the elaborate many-chambered houses for tiny and invisible life transcend our comprehension ? The philosopher delights to show that a grain of sand on the shore of a sea, and a thought in the mind of a child, are bound by a law which cannot be broken, with a past that is infinite and a future that is eternal. The Christian rejoices to know that God has a plan for every man-that the provision for a soul's salvation is infinite, connected with worlds and times, transactions and interests, surpassing knowledge. To God, in a human sense, is no such thing as absolute size; relative greatness and smallness-nothing more. To us things appear small when scarcely seen by the naked eye; very small when a powerful microscope barely suffices to render them visible; and the space between us and a fixed star is enormous as compared with that between the earth and sun; but there is absolutely nothing to show that a portion of matter, which even in our most powerful microscopes is hopelessly minute for investigation, may not be complex as the stars that exceed our sun in magnitude. Continue and enlarge the thought. The whole truth, whether as to great or small, is transcendental. The universe in grandeur, in extent, in variety of mighty orbs circling mightier suns; those suns themselves glittering attendants of other centres, stupendously wonderful, whose circuit it may be that no created intelligenee is able to measure; leads to the conclusion-confirmed by astronomy-that the spectacle germinate, must be placed in darkness-this being the case even with those plants which cannot flower and fruit until they receive the solar beams and power-that the living principle began to germinate ere solar beams shone with great light on the earth. The sun was hotter formerly than now, but the Zodiacal light and corona may have had particles not luminous which hindered the shining forth of great light. It may be that when the sun was giving forth most heat he was simultaneously raising the greatest amount of obstruction to the propagation of radiations from his surface. This throws light on the Divine Narrative. Grass, herb, tree, are representative words for all vegetation; and grass comprises that low order, called Cryptogams, or flowerless plants. The earliest may have been like those fungi which are found in mines, quarries, and gloomy or dark places. Herb and tree stand for that growth of flowering plants, including modern cereals, fruit and forest trees, which now adorn the earth; but probably did not exist until required for the nourishment of animal life. We may reasonably conclude that, lord of earthly life as is the sun, creative energy waited not for his manifestation on the fourth day; but that in the water and on the land, even before the sun's face was cleared from the battle and smoke of early cosmical struggles, life became rooted in the ground and floated in the waters; and when, with clear face, the monarch surveyed the earth, many other forms of life sprang up gladdened with his smile. The Sun's Path through Space. As knowledge and piety extend the horizon of view, the world enlarges to our contemplation; we travel beyond the sphere of sun, moon, earth, planets, and enter new firmaments to behold other suns and stars of greater and lesser splendour. The vast system, of which we are members, is hasting, with meteors, comets, satellites, asteroids, planets, sun, from the southern rich region of stars-the neighbourhood of Canis Major, Columba, and Lepus, to the northern rich region— where the chiefest splendour is gathered in Cygnus. We speed along a relatively barren path, from a rich past to a glorious future, at a rate of one hundred and fifty-four millions one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles the year. We Sun's Path through Space. 231 circle a centre in the direction of Alcyone, a star of the Pleiades, of which Job (xxxviii. 31) said long ago—“ Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades?" Round some central sun, or central void without any preponderate mass, or in a great vortex-ring, we move as parts in a scheme too wonderful and complicate to be as yet interpreted, and we complete the course in about eighteen million two hundred thousand years. As the earth and other planets are carried on, their orbits continually advance; the earth, beheld from the sun, is but a dust-mote in his beams; and the actual path, year by year, is through fresh space. Viewing the sun, as among other suns, and the planetary orbits, as seen from the fixed stars, those orbits are little more than a point, and the sun is invisible. What lines of gigantic boundary fix the order and place of every constellation! What unknown possibilities lie in that measureless extension of space where worlds are sprinkled as dust of gold for the display of intellectual and moral life! Our sun and his fellow-suns are connected with groups of minor suns, with clusters of star-dust, with masses of starmist, with whorls and convolutions of nebulous matter, sometimes combined in vast spherical gatherings of worlds. There are orbs lying in such close order that we think great brilliancy is in those heavens; but, after stricter examination, they are found wide apart as the inconceivable distance between our Isun and his nearest fellow. Further off, are stars whose rays take thousands, perhaps millions, of years to reach the earth. The arrangement is of striking order, and the possibility of it having sprung up by chance is so ridiculously small that Quetelet calculates it is as nothing. There is a multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, and a countless succession of worlds in infinite time, with point or base of gravity regulated by the weight and motion of all. Great and glorious is the Garden of God. The suns are planted in flowering beds of many splendid colours. The planets interweave in sparkling germination, various foliage, blooming fecundity of borders. Dark suns, weird places, cavernous chaotic regions, shadow forth the desolation of eternal wintry fields. There are ridges and clusters, rows and shelvings, spirals and streams, in celestial depths where are signs of as yet unthought of laws. "I shall maintain it all my life, whoever says in his heart there is no God, and makes use of a different language, is either a liar or a madman." 1 Scripture holds closely to mundane affairs, yet the very ground on which religion and morality are based, is that we move in a wider circle than the physical; that spiritual beings, good and evil, enter our firmament, concern themselves with the destiny of our race; and that we, after a rational service in duty and trial, shall enter a vast congregation of pure spirits who are further within the circle of Divine Power, and nearer to the manifestation of Divine Glory. Meanwhile, God guides us by His hand, and in His heart has sympathy. Life's trials cast down, but not destroy; lightning may rend the firmament, yet awake no fear; and sickness, touching our body with premonition of the grave, brings conviction that we shall live again. Like the suns. and stars, kindled into splendour from previous worlds, our restored spirits, with frames purified and refashioned, will evermore live on, and find starry pathway to the Eternal Throne. Thoughtful men studying the Sun's Path through Space, Rule, Physical Constitution, Age, Origin, receive a deep impression that the Divine account, the simplest in the world. is not vague nor indefinite; but startling, grand, abrupt. The appearance corresponds to our limited aspect of Nature, words and times agree with our ignorance and mortality, but possess an inner spirit revealing powers of the world to come. Marvellously strange! The pomp of heaven is made a plea for clothing the earth with poor garments, and the Father's boundless wealth a reason that we should expect nothing. Forgetting that if a narrative, like that of Scripture, bristling with apparent contradictions, startling and bold in a sturdy contempt of confidence in human will and wisdom, is found to agree with accurate science, the Book must be of God; an attempt is made to turn God's greatness against us. We are asked-" Of what consequence can men, their pleasures or their pains, be to Him in whose sight all the worlds our 1 Rousseau, "Emilius," vol. ii. p. 230. |