The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

The revelations of Christianity have brought to light so much respecting the moral character and moral government of Jehovah, as to leave little further to be desired or expected in this world.

The natural attributes of the Deity have a more spiritual and less anthropopathic aspect in the New Testament than in the Old. We are told in the former distinctly, that God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. But God’s moral character, as developed in the New Testament, in the plan of redemption and salvation, presents us with a perfection and a glory unknown in all previous revelations. We have, it is true, in the Old Testament intimations and predictions of the plan, which is fully developed and exemplified in the new dispensation. But these were only shadows of Jesus Christ and him crucified. When he appeared, and by his sufferings, as a substitute for man, reconciled divine justice and mercy, and made a clear exposition of the moral law, and a disclosure of a future state of retributions, a flood of light was thrown upon God’s moral character. Every cloud that had rested upon it was cleared away, and immaculate holiness covered it with unapproachable splendor. In short, the human mind is incapable of forming a more correct estimate of moral excellence than is exhibited in the scriptural plan of salvation. The more it is meditated upon, and the more we experience its practical influence, the higher will be our conceptions of the moral glory of the divine character; nor have we reason to suppose that any further revelations would increase our apprehensions of it. For benevolence, mercy, justice, and grace are here exhibited in unlimited, that is, in infinite, glory and perfection, and therefore can never be exceeded.

But though the exhibitions of the divine character and plans contained in the Bible are thus perfect and excellent, they are not the only exhibitions which the universe contains, and which man is capable of understanding. Lo, these are a part of his ways. The Bible has left the wonders of the natural world where it found them, to be examined and developed by philosophy. Some have thought that it has anticipated a few scientific discoveries; but if it had done this in one instance, it must have carried the same plan through the whole circle of science; else how could readers determine when the sacred writers were describing phenomena according to appearances and general belief, and when according to real scientific truth? But the fact is, scientific discoveries are left to man’s ingenuity; and as they are made from time to time, they bring out new and splendid illustrations of the character and plans of Jehovah. Let us now recur to some of these discoveries, that have opened the widest vistas into the arcana of nature.

The discoveries in modern astronomy constitute the fifth step in man’s knowledge of God.

In order to see how much man’s conceptions of the universe have been enlarged by these discoveries, compare the opinions which prevailed before the introduction of the Copernican system with what is now certain knowledge, founded upon physico-mathematics, respecting the extent of the universe. Then this earth was thought to be the centre and the principal body of the creation, immovably fixed, with the heavenly bodies, generally thought to be of diminutive size, revolving around it every twenty-four hours. The earth, too, except in the opinion of a few sagacious philosophers, was not imagined to be that vast globe which we now understand it to be, but a flat surface, perhaps a few hundred or thousand miles in extent, bounded by a circle, and resting on an imaginary foundation. The heavenly bodies were looked upon as little more than shining points, or at most a few yards, or by the most daring fancies a few miles, in extent. What a change have the telescope, the quadrant, and the transit instrument, aided by profound mathematics, and the talismanic power of the Newtonian theory of gravitation, produced! Every schoolboy now knows that this globe, enormous though it be compared with what the eye can take in from the loftiest eminence, is but a mere speck in creation, and, with the exception of the moon, appearing from other worlds only as one of the smallest stars in their heavens; so small that its extinction would not be noticed. To the ignorant mind, distances and magnitudes exceeding a hundred miles are conceived of only with great difficulty. But the astronomer, when he conceives of magnitudes, must make a thousand miles his shortest unit, and a million of miles when he conceives of distances in the solar system. And when he attempts to go beyond the sun and the planets, the shortest division on his measuring line must be the diameter of the earth’s orbit; and even then he will be borne onward so far, not on the wings of imagination, but of mathematics, that this enormous distance has vanished to a point. Even then he has only reached the nearest fixed star, and, of course, has only just entered upon the outer limit of creation. He must prepare himself for a still loftier flight. He must give up the diameter of the earth’s orbit as the unit of his measurements, because too short, and take as his standard the passage of light, at the rate of two hundred thousand miles per second. With that speed can he go on, until his mind has reckoned up six thousand years of seconds, and he will reach fixed stars whose light has not yet arrived at the earth, because it did not commence its journey till the time of man’s creation.

But it is not merely in respect to distance and magnitude that astronomy has enlarged our knowledge of the universe. Numerically it has opened a field equally wide. Think of two thousand worlds rolling nightly around us, visible to the naked eye. Take the telescope, and see those two thousand multiply to fifty or one hundred millions, and then recollect how very improbable it is that the keenest optics of earth can reach more than an infinitesimal part of creation. Surely the mind is as much confounded and lost, when it attempts to conceive of the number of the worlds in the universe, as when it contemplates their distances and magnitudes. In respect to number and distance, at least, we find no resting-place but in infinity.

Now, when we turn our thoughts to the Author of such a universe, our conceptions of his power, wisdom, and benevolence cannot but enlarge in the same ratio as our views of his works. They must, therefore, experience a prodigious expansion. And, indeed, the merest child in a Christian land, in the nineteenth century, has a far wider and nobler conception of the perfections of Jehovah than the wisest philosopher who lived before astronomy had gone forth on her circumnavigation of the universe. From the fact, also, which astronomy discloses, that worlds are in widely different chemical and geological conditions, some gaseous and transparent, some solid and opaque, and some liquid and incandescent, the mind can hardly avoid the inference that they are fulfilling the vast and varied plans of Jehovah.

The sixth step in man’s knowledge of Jehovah has been made by the microscope.

To give any correct idea of the boundless field which that instrument has opened into the infinitesimal parts of creation, it would be necessary to go into details too extended for the present occasion. Perhaps the animalcula or infusoria furnish the best example. “In the clearest waters,” says an able writer, “and also in the strongly-troubled acid and salt fluids of the various zones of the earth; in springs, rivers, lakes, and seas; in the internal moisture of living plants and animal bodies; and probably, at times, carried about in the vapor and dust of the whole atmosphere of the earth, exists a world, by the common senses of mankind unperceived, of very minute living beings, which have been called, for the last seventy years, infusoria. In the ordinary pursuits of life, this mysterious and infinite kingdom of living creatures is passed by without our knowledge of, or interest in, its wonders. But to the quiet observer how astonishing do these become, when he brings to his aid those optical powers by which his faculty of vision is so much strengthened! In every drop of dirty, stagnant water, we are generally, if not always, able to perceive, by means of the microscope, moving bodies, of from one eleven hundred and fiftieth to one twenty-five thousandth of an inch in diameter, and which often lie packed so closely together that the space between each individual scarcely equals that of their diameter.”—Prichard, History of Infusoria, p. 2, 1841.

Again says he, “It is hardly conceivable that, within the narrow space, [of a grain of mustard-seed,] eight millions of living, active creatures can exist, all richly endowed with the organs and faculties of animal life. Such, however, is the astonishing fact.”—Ib. p. 3.