The mathematician may demonstrate the size and properties of a triangle, but he cannot demonstrate the continuance of any actual triangle for one hour, or one minute after his demonstration.
A mathematical proof admits of no doubts or contingencies. A man may calculate the force of the wind, but he cannot tell how long it will continue to blow in that direction, whether it will increase to a hurricane or subside to a calm. He may count the revolutions of an engine, but he cannot test its extreme power, or prove its continued existence for a single hour. How many of the most important affairs of life can be demonstrated by means of the multiplication table? It would be safe to say not one in ten. Again, mathematics frequently deal with purely ideal figures, which never did or never can exist. There is not a mathematical line—length without breadth—in all the universe. On careful examination, we find that there are no mathematical figures in nature. We speak of the earth as a sphere, but it is a sphere pitted with hollows as deep as the ocean, and crested with protuberances as high as the Andes or Himalayas, in every conceivable irregularity of form. There is not an acre of absolutely level ground on the face of the earth; even its waters pile themselves up in waves, or dash into breakers, rather than remain perfectly level for a single hour. The microscope reveals the fact that the pearl is proportionally rougher than the surface of the earth, and the dew-drop is no nearer round than a pear. When we speak of the orbits of the planets as elliptical or circular, it is only in a general way; just as we speak of a circular saw, the outline of its teeth being regularity itself, as compared with the motions of the planets in their orbits.
So also with Astronomy, it is far from being an exact science. From the comparative simplicity of the forces with which it has to deal, and the approximate regularity of the paths of the heavenly bodies, it may be regarded as the science in which the greatest possible certainty is attainable. It opens, at once, the widest field to the imagination, and the noblest range to the reason; it has attracted the most exalted intellects to its pursuit, and has rewarded their toils with the grandest discoveries. Lest we should ascribe to the discoverers of the laws of the universe, the glory due to their Creator, let us glance at some of the errors of astronomy.
Sir John Herschel, than whom none has a better right to speak on this subject, devotes a chapter to the "Errors of Astronomy."
"No philosophical observation or experiment is absolutely accurate. The error of a thousandth part of an inch in an instrument, will multiply itself into thousands and millions of miles according to the distance of the object."
To begin at our own little globe, where exactness is more easily attained, than among distant planets, we find that two of the greatest astronomers, Bessel and Newton, differ from each other in the measurement of the diameter of the earth fully eleven miles. So also the diameter of the earth's orbit is uncertain by 360,000 miles. Now the diameter of the earth, and the diameter of its orbit are the very foot rule and yard stick, as it were, by which astronomers measure the heavens. (See Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol, I. page 7, and Vol. IV. page 477.)
"Let us then be candid," says Loomis, "and claim no more for astronomy than is reasonably due. When in 1846 the great astronomer Le Verrier announced the existence of a planet hitherto unseen, and when he assigned to it its exact position in the heavens, and declared that it shone like a star of the eighth magnitude, not an astronomer of France, and scarcely one in Europe had sufficient faith in the prediction to prompt him to point his telescope to the heavens."
So also geology, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the hands of infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been found to be unreliable in many particulars. True a wonderful outcry has been raised about the antagonism between the records of the rocks, and the records of the Bible. But no one has yet succeeded in proving such an antagonism; for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology says how old the earth is. They both say it is very old. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The term here translated "in the beginning" signifies, as every Hebrew scholar knows, a period of such remote antiquity, that in Bible language it stands next to eternity. Now if the geologist could prove that the earth is a thousand million years older than the time when Adam appeared upon it, this would contradict no statement of the Bible. So when infidels come to us with their geological theories about the manner in which God made the earth, or in which the earth is said to have made itself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that they have scientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible is false, we surely have a right to enquire into the foundation of these theories upon which they have built such startling conclusions. Now it is remarkable that every infidel argument is based not upon the facts, but upon the theories of geology. But how does our infidel geologist set about his work of proving that the earth has any given age, say a thousand million years? Why he simply commences with a theory or supposition. Yet a demonstration must rest upon facts, it admits of no suppositions. In examining the crust of the earth we find a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed below the water, some of them out of the fragments of former rocks containing bones, shells and casts of fishes and tracks of the feet of birds, made when these rocks were in the state of soft mud. These layers form what is termed the crust of the earth, and are altogether several miles in thickness. Yet not one of these layers gives us the element of time. They announce to us successive generations of animals and plants; but they do not tell us how long these generations lived. We have every reason to believe that the condition of the world was very different then, from what it is now; not only as regards its temperature, of which we have many proofs that it was much higher than at present; but likewise in regard to the density of the atmosphere and the distribution of water on the surface of the globe. All these conditions indicate that both animal and vegetable life were then far different from what they are now, as the fossil remains of those animals and plants abundantly and unquestionably prove. But in all this we have no means of determining the duration of those species. The various species of plants and animals may have flourished during a period of a thousand, a million, or a thousand million years for all we know.
