The scenery was well calculated to impress Abraham's mind with a sense of the ability of Christ to fulfill a very glorious promise, by a very improbable event; but the illustration was as well calculated as the promise to test the character of that faith which takes God's Word as sufficient evidence of things not seen; for, if the promise was a trying test of faith, so was the illustration. Before this, God had promised that his seed should be as the dust of the earth; and afterward he declared it should be as the sand of the seashore; the well-known symbol of a multitude beyond all power of calculation. To couple the stars of heaven with the sand upon the seashore in any such connection as to imply that the stars too were innumerable, or that their number came within any degree of comparison with the ocean sands, must have seemed to Abraham in the highest degree mysterious, even as it has appeared to scoffers, in modern times, utterly ridiculous; for, though the first glance at the sky conveys the impression that the stars are really innumerable, the investigations of our imperfect astronomy seem to assure us that this is by no means the case. And, as the patriarch sat, night after night, at his tent door, and, in obedience to the command of Christ, counted the stars, and made such a catalogue of them as his Chaldean preceptors had used, he would very speedily come to the conclusion, that so far as he could see, they were by no means innumerable; for the catalogue of Hipparchus reckons only one thousand and twenty-two as visible to one observer, and the whole number visible in both hemispheres by the naked eye does not exceed eight thousand.[309] And even if we suppose, that these old patriarchs had better eyes, as we know they had a clearer sky, than modern western observers, and that Abraham saw the moons of Jupiter, and stars as small, still the number would not seem in the least degree comparable with the number of the sands upon the seashore—whereof a million are contained in a cubic inch,[310] a number greater than the population of the globe in a square foot,[311] while the sum total of the human race, from Adam to this hour, would not approach to the aggregate of the sands of a single mile. Though the stars of a size too small to be visible to our eyes, are much more numerous than the larger stars, yet even up to the range of view possessed by ordinary telescopes, they are by no means innumerable. In fact, they are counted and registered, and the number of the stars of the ninth magnitude, which are four times as distant as the most distant visible to our eyes—so distant that their light is five hundred and eighty-six years in traveling toward us—is declared to be exactly thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine. Abraham's sense and Abraham's faith must have had many a conflict on this promise, as the faith and the sense of many of his children, especially the scientific portion of them, have since, when reading such portions as this; and those other Scriptures which represent it as an achievement of Omniscience, that "he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."[312] It is indeed remarkable how God delights to test the faith of his people, and to stumble the pride of fools, by presenting this mysterious truth, of the innumerable multitude of the stars, in every announcement of the wonderful works of Him who is perfect in wisdom. Infant astronomy stretched out her hands to catch the stars, and count them. Many a proud Infidel wondered that Moses could be so silly as to suppose he could not count the stars, and the believer often wondered what these words could mean. But faith rests in the persuasion of two great truths: "God is very wise," and "I am very ignorant."
The increase of knowledge, by widening the boundaries of our ignorance, seemed for a time to render the difficulty even greater. The increased power of Herschel's telescope, and his discovery of the constitution of the Milky Way, mark an era in the progress of astronomy, and enlarge our views of the extent of the universe, to an extent inconceivable by those who have not studied the science. Where we see only a faint whitish cloud stretching across the sky, Herschel's telescope disclosed a vast bed of stars. At one time he counted five hundred and eighty-eight stars in the field of his telescope. In a quarter of an hour, one hundred and sixteen thousand passed before his eye. In another portion, he found three hundred and thirty-one thousand stars in a single cluster.[313] He found the whole structure of that vast luminous cloud which spans the sky, "to consist entirely of stars, scattered by millions, like glittering dust, on the background of the general heavens."
Yet still it was not supposed to be at all impossible to estimate their numbers. Even this distinguished astronomer, a few years ago, computed it at eight or ten millions. Schroeter allowed twenty degrees of it to pass before him, and withdrew from the majestic spectacle, exclaiming, "What Omnipotence!" He calculated, however, that the number of the stars visible through one of the best telescopes in Europe, in 1840, was twelve millions; a number equaled by a single generation of Abraham's descendants, far below the power of computation, and utterly insignificant, as compared with the sands of the sea.
Had our powers of observation stopped here, the great promise must still have seemed as mysterious to the astronomer, as it once seemed to the Patriarch. But if either the Father of the Faithful, or the Father of Sidereal Astronomy, had deluded himself with the notion, that he fully comprehended either the words or the works of Him who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working, and argued thence that, because the revealed words and the visible works seemed not to correspond, they were really contradictory, he would have committed the blunder of modern Infidels, who assume that they know everything, and that as God's knowledge can not be any greater than theirs, every Scripture which their science can not comprehend must be erroneous. The grandest truths, imperfectly perceived in the twilight of incipient science, serve as stumbling-blocks for conceited speculators, as well as landmarks on the boundaries of knowledge to true philosophers, who will ever imbibe the spirit of Newton's celebrated saying: "I seem to myself like a child gathering pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean of knowledge lies unexplored before me;" or the profound remark of Humboldt: "What is seen does not exhaust that which is perceptible."
But the progress of science was not destined merely to coast the shore of this ocean. In 1845, Lord Rosse, and a band of accomplished astronomers, commenced a voyage through the immensities, with a telescope which has enlarged our view of the visible universe to one hundred and twenty-five million times the extent before perceived, and displayed far more accurately the real form and nature of objects previously seen. Herschel's researches into the Architecture of the Heavens, which have justly rendered his name immortal as the science he illustrated, had revealed the existence of great numbers of nebulæ—clouds of light—faint, yet distinct. He supposed many of these to consist of a luminous fluid, pretty near to us; at least, comparatively so; for to believe that they were stars, so far away as to be severally invisible in his forty feet telescope, while yet several of these clouds are distinctly seen by the naked eye, involved the belief of distances so astounding, and of multitudes so incredible, and of a degree of closeness of the several stars so unparalleled by anything which even he had observed, that his imagination and reason failed to meet the requirements of such a problem. The supposition was, however, thrown out by this gigantic intellect, that these clouds might be firmaments; that the Bible word heavens might be literally plural; and more than that, he labored in the accumulation of facts which tended to confirm it. He disclosed the fact, that several of these apparent clouds, which, to very excellent telescopes, displayed only a larger surface of cloudy matter, did, in the reflector of his largest telescope, display themselves in their true character, as globular clusters, consisting of innumerable multitudes of glorious stars; and, moreover, that, stretching away far beyond star, or Milky Way, or nebulæ, he had seen, in some parts of the heavens, "a stippling," or uniform dotting of the field of view, by points of light too small to admit of any one being steadily or fixedly examined, and too numerous for counting, were it possible so to view them! What are these? Millions upon millions of years must have elapsed ere that faint light could reach our globe, from those profundities of space, though it travels like the lightning's flash. If they are stars, the sands of the seashore are as inferior in numbers as the surface of earth is inferior in dimensions to the arch of heaven. But if these faint dots and stipplings are not single stars!—if they are star-clouds—galaxies—firmaments, like our Milky Way—our infinity is multiplied by millions upon millions! Imagination pants, reason grows dizzy, arithmetic fails to fathom, and human eyes fear to look into the abyss. No wonder that this profound astronomer, when a glimpse of infinity flashed on his eye, retired from the telescope, trembling in every nerve, afraid to behold.
And yet this astounding supposition is a literal truth; and the light of those suns, whose twilight thus bowed down that mighty intellect in reverent adoration, now shines before human eyes in all its noonday refulgence. One of the most remarkable of these nebulæ—one which is visible to a good eye in the belt of Orion—has been disclosed to the observers at Parsontown as a firmament; and minute points, scarce perceptible to common telescopes, blaze forth as magnificent clusters of glorious stars, so close and crowded, that no figure can adequately describe them, save the twin symbol of the promise, "the sand by the seashore," or "the dust of the earth." "There is a minute point, near Polaris," says Nichol, "so minute, that it requires a good telescope to discern its being. I have seen it as represented by a good mirror, blazing like a star of the first magnitude; and though examined by a potent microscope, clear and definite as the distinctest of these our nearest orbs, when beheld through an atmosphere not disturbed. Nay, through distances of an order I shall scarcely name, I have seen a mass of orbs compressed and brilliant, so that each touched on each other, like the separate grains of a handful of sand, and yet there seemed no melting or fusion of any one of the points into the surrounding mass. Each sparkled individually its light pure and apart, like that of any constituent of the cluster of the Pleiades."[314]
"The larger and nearer masses are seen with sufficient distinctness to reveal the grand fact decisive of their character, viz: that they consist of multitudes of closely related orbs, forming an independent system. In other cases we find the individual stars by no means so clearly defined. Through effect, in all probability, of distance, the intervals between them appear much less, the shining points themselves being also fainter; while the masses still further off may be best likened to a handful of golden sand, or, as it is aptly termed, star dust; beyond which no stars, or any vestige of them, are seen, but only a patch or streak of milky light, similar to the unresolved portions of our surrounding zone."[315]
To say, then, that the stars of the sky are actually innumerable is only a cold statement of the plainest fact. Hear it in the language of one privileged to behold the glories of one out of the thousands of similar firmaments: "The mottled region forming the lighter part of the mass (the nebula in Orion) is a very blaze of stars. But that stellar creation, now that we are freed from all dubiety concerning the significance of those hazes that float numberless in space, how glorious, how endless! Behold, amid that limitless ocean, every speck, however remote or dim, a noble galaxy. Lustrous they are, too; in manifold instances beyond all neighboring reality—beyond the loftiest dream which ever exercised the imagination. The great cluster in Hercules has long dazzled the heart with its splendors, but we have learned now that among circular and compact galaxies, a class to which the nebulous stars belong, there are multitudes which infinitely surpass it—nay, that schemes of being rise above it, sun becoming nearer to sun, until their skies must be one blaze of light—a throng of burning activities! But, far aloft stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory and wonder of the starry universe! Judged by the only criticism yet applicable, it is perhaps so remote that its light does not reach us in less than fifty or sixty thousand years; and as at the same time it occupies so large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendous must be the extent of the nebula. It would seem almost as if all the other clusters hitherto gauged were collected and compressed into one, they would not surpass this mighty group, in which every wisp—every wrinkle—is a sand-heap of stars. There are cases in which, though imagination has quailed, reason may still adventure inquiry, and prolong its speculations; but at times we are brought to a limit across which no human faculty has the strength to penetrate, and where, as now, at the very footstool of the secret Throne, we can only bend our heads, and silently adore. And from the inner Adyta—the invisible shrine of what alone is and endures—a voice is heard: