They are no more agreed as to its composition after it reaches us than as to its velocity. Newton taught that it consisted of seven colors; Wallaston denies more than four; Brewster reduces the number to three—red, yellow, and blue. Newton measures the yellow and violet, and finds them as forty to eighty. Fraunhofer makes the proportion twenty-seven to one hundred and nine. Wallaston's spectrum differs from both. Field says, "No one has ventured to alter either estimate, and no one who is familiar with the spectrum will put much faith in any measurement of it, by whosoever and with what care soever made."[354] He says white light is composed of five parts red, three yellow, and eight blue; which differs wholly from Brewster, who gives it three parts red, five yellow, and two of blue.
Equally wild are their calculations of the quantity of light emitted by particular stars. Radeau calculates Vulcan's light at 2.25 that of Mercury; Lias, from the same observations, at 7.36, nearly three times as much.[355] Sir John Herschel calculates that Alpha Centauri emits more light than the sun; that the light of Sirius is four times as great, and its parallax much less; so that by such a calculation Sirius would have an intrinsic splendor sixty-three times that of the sun. But Wallaston only calculates his light at one-fourth of this amount; and Steinheil makes it only one two-hundredth part of the former estimate.[356]
Astronomers have lately been comforting the world with the assurance that we have little to fear from comets; that the superstitious fear of the comets prevalent in the past was ill founded, because comets are so very thin that we might pass through one without its breaking up anything. But that, as Principal Leitch shows us, is not the only question. "We know that the most deadly miasmata are so subtle that it is impossible to detect them by any chemical tests, and a very homeopathic dose of a comet, in addition to the elements of our own atmosphere, might produce the most fatal effects."[357]
The phenomena indicative of cosmical processes are out of the range of astronomical observation. We can only observe those indicated by light, and gravitation; but how small a proportion of the formative processes of our own world indicate themselves by these two classes of phenomena! How few of the chemical, vegetative, animal, moral, social, or even geological processes, now progressing under our own observation, could give us notice of their existence by the two channels of light and gravitation? How, then, can philosophers ever learn the process of building worlds like our own in which many other powers are at work?
Astronomers are not all agreed as to the existence of a cosmical ether; nor do those who assert it agree as to its properties. What is its nature, density, power of refraction and reflection of light, and resistance to motion? What is its temperature? Is it uniform, or like our atmosphere, ever varying? These are manifestly questions indispensable to be answered before any theory of the development of worlds is even conceivable. But of the properties of this all-extending cosmical atmosphere, which is the very breath of life of the development theory, astronomers present the most conflicting statements. Professor Vaughan says, "If such a body exists, it is beyond our estimation of all that is material. It has no weight, according to our idea of weight; no resistance, according to our idea of calculating resistance by mechanical tests; no volume, on our views of volume; no chemical activity, according to our experimental and absolute knowledge of chemical action. In plain terms, it presents no known re-agency by which it can be isolated from surrounding or intervening matter."[358] Or, in plainer terms, we know nothing about it.
The only fact about it which astronomers have ventured to specify and calculate is its temperature; for upon this all the power of the development world-making process depends. But they are very far from any agreement; indeed, they are much farther apart than the equator from the poles. Stanley finds the temperature of absolute space—58°; Arago—70°; Humboldt—85°; Herschel—132°; Saigey—107°; Pouillet, to be exact to a fraction—223-6/10° below the freezing point; though when it gets to be so cold as that one would think he would hardly stay out of doors to measure fractions of a degree. But Poisson thinks he is over 200° too cold, and fixes the temperature accurately, in his own opinion, 8-6/10°. Moreover, he alleges that there is no more uniformity in the temperature of the heavens than in that of our own atmosphere, owing to the unequal radiations of heat from the stars; and that the earth, and the whole solar system, receive their internal heat from without, while passing through hot regions of space.[359]
From this chaos of conflicting assertions of unknown facts the theory of development develops itself. Its fundamental postulate is the difference of temperature between the nebulæ and the surrounding space. But the fact is that nobody knows what is the temperature of either space or nebulæ, nor is anybody likely ever to know enough of either to base any scientific theory upon. Astronomy will never teach men how to make worlds; nor is it of the least consequence that it does not; since we could not make them, even if we knew how.
From these specimens of the errors and contradictions of the best astronomers, the teachers upon whose accuracy we depend for our faith in science, we can see, that though the Pope and the Infidel savans may claim infallibility, yet after all the savant is just as infallible as the Pope, viz: he is right when he is right, and he is wrong when he is wrong, and that happens frequently and common folks can not always tell when. There is no such thing, then, as infallible science upon faith, in which I can venture to reject God's Bible, and risk my soul's salvation. Science is founded on faith in very fallible men.
3. Geology, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the hands of Infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been supposed to be anti-Christian. The supposition is utterly unfounded. Such of its facts as have been well ascertained have demonstrated the being, wisdom, and goodness of an Almighty Creator, with irresistible evidence. Nor, though a wonderful outcry has been raised about the opposition between the records of the rocks and the records of the Bible, regarding the antiquity of the earth, has any one yet succeeded in proving such an opposition, for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology says how old it is. They both say it is very old. The Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;" and by the use which it makes of the word beginning, leaves us to infer that it was long before the existence of the human race.[360] If the geologist could prove that the earth was six thousand millions of years older than Adam, it would contradict no statement of the Bible. The Bible reader, therefore, has no reason to question any well ascertained fact of geology. But when Infidels come to us with their geological theories about the mode in which God made the earth, or in which the earth made itself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that they have got scientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible account is false, and that our old traditions can not stand before the irresistible evidence of science, we are surely bound to look at the foundation of facts, and the logical superstructure, which sustain such startling conclusions.
Now it is remarkable that every Infidel argument against the statements of the Bible, or rather against what they suppose to be the statements of the Bible, is based, not on the facts, but upon the theories, of geology. I do not know one which is based solely on facts and inductions from facts. Every one of them has a wooden leg, and goes hobbling upon an if.