[COMET PASSING ROUND THE SUN (ITS PERIHELION).]
But infidels tell us that the universe is infinite, and therefore self-existent. This assertion is essential to their creed. They must establish this fact before they can convince themselves or any other person, that the universe had no Creator; for that which exists by the necessity of its own nature must exist in all time and in every place. But it can be easily shown that our solar system has boundaries, and does not fill the immensity of space. That broad band of luminous clouds, which stretches across the heaven, called the Milky Way, consists of millions of stars, so small and distant that we cannot see the individual stars, and so numerous that we cannot help seeing the light of the mass; just as we may see the outline of a forest at a distance, but are unable to distinguish the individual trees. Besides the Milky Way there are many other star-clouds, in various parts of the heavens, which have successively been shown by the telescope to consist of multitudes of stars. But all around these star-clouds, or Nebulae as they are called, the clear blue sky is discovered by the naked eye. Now it is easy to perceive that if all the regions of space were filled with self-luminous suns or planets capable of reflecting light, or even comets, we should see no blue sky at all: in a word, the whole heaven would be one vast Milky Way.
Though the telescope discovers multitudes of stars where the naked eye sees none, yet they are seen projected on a perfectly dark heaven. "And even through the Milky Way, and the other star-clouds, the telescope penetrates through intervals absolutely dark and completely void of any star of the smallest telescopic magnitude" (Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvii). It may assist us to understand the full import of this declaration to remember that the largest telescopes now in use, clearly define any object on the moon's surface as large as the Deseret Bank. We may comprehend to some extent their power of penetrating space by the fact that light, which flashes from San Francisco to London quicker than you can close your eye and open it again requires thousands of years to travel to our earth from the most distant stars discernible by these telescopes. If a solar system like ours existed anywhere within this amazing distance these telescopes would certainly reveal it. In gazing through these instruments we are made to feel most sensibly that not merely this world which constitutes our earthly all, and yon glorious sun which shines upon it, but all the host of heaven's suns, planets, moons and firmaments, which our unaided eyes behold, are but as the handful of sand of the ocean shore, compared with the immensity of the universe. But ever, and along with this it has shown us the ocean, as well as the shore, and revealed boundless regions of darkness and solitude stretching around and far away beyond these islands of existence.
When we come to consider the vastness of these regions of darkness, over which no light has traveled for millions of years, and remember also that astronomers have looked clear through the nebulae, and find that they bear no more proportion to the infinite darkness behind them, than the sparks of a chimney do to the extent of the sky against which they seem projected, so far from imagining the solar system to be infinite, we stand confounded at its relative insignificance.
There is no possible evasion of this great fact. It cannot be objected "that stars may exist at vast distances, whose light has not yet reached the limits of our system;" for there is no possible distance over which light could not have traveled, during eternal duration. But the eternal existence of these stars is the very thing which the atheist is concerned to prove. If we admit that these worlds had a beginning, we are compelled to seek a cause for that beginning: that is to say, a Creator.
Nor will it answer the purpose to say, "that these dark regions may be filled with dark stars." If it could be proven that some stars shine, while others are dark; then why this difference? Variety is an effect, and demands a prior cause. Worlds therefore do not exist by the necessity of their own nature, wherever there is room for them, but must have had a pre-existent, external and supernatural cause of their existence in the places where they exist. This implies design—will— God.
In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do we not hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, and asking, "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth" (Job xxxviii. 33). How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may be ever streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. And yet, because man has traced a little concerning one or two of these laws, we have deemed our astronomy complete. We have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, to believe that the discovery of these forces exhausts the treasures of infinite wisdom.
But the infidel asks us, "Does not the Bible make a false declaration, when it says that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago?" We reply by asking, Where does the Bible say so? "But," says our objector, "is not this the doctrine held by the various sects and taught by the various commentators?" That is not the question before us just now. We are not asking what sects believe, or uninspired teachers teach; but, "What does the Bible say." The Bible uniformly attributes the most remote antiquity to the work of creation. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. i, 1). So far from supposing man's appearance on the earth to be even approximately coeval with the creation, human presumption is reproved in the remarkable words, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job, xxxviii. 4.) In majestic contrast with the frail human race, Moses glances at the primeval monuments of God's antiquity, as though by them he might form some faint conceptions of eternity, and sings, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting, to everlasting thou art God" (Ps. xc, 2). The very phrase in the beginning, is in itself an emphatic refutation of the notion, that the work of creation is only some six or seven thousand years old. Geologists have been unable to invent a better, and have borrowed from the Bible this very form of speech, to designate as the primary formations, those strata beyond which human knowledge cannot penetrate. This phrase, in Bible language, marks the last promontory on the boundless ocean of past eternity: the only positive phrase, by which we can express the most remote period of past duration. It expresses not a date—a point of duration; but a period—a vast cycle. But one boundary is perceptible to mortals: that where creation rises from its abyss. Created eye has never seen the other shore.
Let the geologist then penetrate as deeply as he can into the profundities of the earth's foundations, and bring forth the monuments of their hoary antiquity; we will follow with unfaltering faith. Let the astronomer raise his telescope and reflect, on our astonished eyes, the light which flashed from morning stars, on the first day of this earth's existence, or even the rays which began to travel from distant suns millions of years ere the first morning dawned on our planet: they shall shed a sacred lustre over the pages of inspiration, and give new beauties of illustration to its majestic symbols. But never in this life will geologists penetrate the depth of its mysteries, nor astronomers attain the sublimity of that beginning revealed in its pages. It is placed in an antiquity beyond the power of human calculation, in that sublime sentence with which it introduces mortals to the Eternal, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
The doctrine of the creation the earth only six or seven thousand years ago is a product of monkish ignorance. Clemens of Alexandria, who lived in the second century of the Christian era, and Justin Martyr, who was a disciple and companion of the Apostle John, both teach the existence of an indefinite period between the creation and the preparatory work, fitting it for the habitation of man. The Jewish rabbis also are perfectly explicit in recognizing these distinctions.