But when we reflect that all this vast aggregation of sun systems, visible in the telescopic field, is not stationary, but is revolving with inconceivable rapidity about some unknown and infinitely remote centre of the universe, how immeasurably vast does the conception become, and how unutterably puerile and fatuous the thought of Mr. Darwin's little whirligig as the author of it all! No wonder the inspired Psalmist exclaims; "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." But listen to the Darwinian exclamation: "The heavens declare the glory of my little whirligig, and the firmament showeth the immensity of my little ovules." With the veil of faith and inspiration lifted, the words of the Psalmist swell into the highest cherubic anthem, while those of Mr. Darwin hardly rise above the squeak of a mole burrowing beneath the glebe!
And what presumptuous mortal shall say that this infinitely remote centre of the universe, around which revolves this infinite number of sun-systems, is not the seat and throne of the Infinite One himself--the Sovereign Intelligence and Power of the universe, directing and upholding all? We know that some of the stars are travelling about this central point of the heavens at a pace exceeding 194,000 miles an hour, or with nearly three times the rapidity of our earth in its orbit. That there must be infinite power, not physical, at this unknown centre of the universe, to hold these myriads of sun-systems in their courses, is a logical induction as irrefragable as that the sun holds his planets in their orbits. And if infinite power is predicable upon this central point, why not infinite intelligence also? Intelligence, we know, controls and utilizes all power in this world; why not all power in the universe? It can utilize every drop of water that thunders down Niagara to-day, as it has already seized upon the lightnings of heaven to make them our post-boy. This is what finite intelligence--that insignificant factor that science would eliminate from the universe--can do; then what may not Infinite Intelligence accomplish?
But the Darwinian systematizers object that science must limit itself to a coordination of the known relations of things in the universe, or deal only with phenomenal facts, not dogmatisms; forgetting that they dogmatize quite as extensively, in constructing their chain of generation, as the theologians do in adhering to the Bible genesis. No theologian objects to a rational synthesis of phenomena, limited to sensible experience; but, in climbing from law to law, he reasonably enough insists, that, when concrete facts rise into abstract conceptions, the highest round in the ladder shall not be knocked out for the accommodation of Robert G. Ingersoll or any other boasted descendant of a gorilla. And he also insists that when a priori speculation is lost in abstract conceptions, the highest must necessarily press alone upon the intuitions of consciousness, where all generalizations cease, and all synthesis is undeniably at an end. Here, in this mysterious chamber of the soul, we stand silent and alone, with only dim and shadowy phantoms about us, as if in the august presence of Deity itself.
But how does scientific speculation propose to stifle these intuitions of consciousness--reduce them to the least of all potential factors in the universe? We will take the very latest of these speculations. In supplementing both the Darwinian theory and the grander speculation of Laplace, the scientists, so called, tell us that the process of aggregation, or the turning out of new worlds in the universe, is still going on; but that the time is coming when all the primeval potency or energy, originally inhering in diffused matter, will have exhausted itself in actual energy, and that then all light, life and motion in the universe, will cease and be at an end. This dissipation of potential energy is to result, they say, in a played-out universe, as it has already resulted, they claim, in a played-out moon, if not countless other heavenly bodies.[[38]] All the exterior planets, or a majority of them at least, are to be placed in this category of dismantled worlds, or those in which all life has hopelessly ceased and become extinct. All has utterly disappeared, or, to paraphrase one of Pope's couplets,
"Beast, bird, fish, insect--what no eye can scan,
Nor glass can reach--from zoophyte to man."
All these dismantled planets, and satellites to planets, are only so many immense cinders--mere refuse slag--of no conceivable interest to science, except to predicate the ultimate conclusion--"a played-out universe, resulting from a played-out potency within the universe." The magnificent clockwork of the heavens will then have run down, with no Darwinian whirligig to wind it up again, and the terrible reality of Byron's dream, which it would seem was not all a dream, be realized in the bright sun extinguished, the stars darkling the eternal space, rayless and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
Oh, if this be star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it! Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers, and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a credo only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable the simple faith of the star-led Magi, who
"Deeming the light that in the east was seen An earnest and a prophecy of rest To weary wanderers, such as they had been,"
came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to the Christ-child--the long expected Messiah--the Redeemer of the world!