Thirdly, is it not evident that man's greatness keeps even pace along the scale of magnitude with the widening creation, since it is his mind that sees and comprehends how wondrous the dimensions of the universe are? The number of stars and the limits of space are not more astounding than it is that he should be capable of knowing such things, enumerating and staking them off. When man has measured the distance and weighed the bulk of Sirius, it is more appropriate to kneel in amazement before the inscrutable mystery of his genius, the irrepressible soaring of his soul, than to sink in despair under the swinging of those lumps of dirt in their unapproachable spheres because they are so gigantic! The appearance of the creation to man is not vaster than his perception of it. They are exactly correlated by the very terms of the statement. As the astronomic world expands, the astronomer's mind dilates and must be as large as it in order to contain it in thought. What we lose in relative importance from the enlargement of the boundaries of the universe we gain from the new revelation of our capacities that is made through these transcendent achievements of our science. That we are favorites of the Creator and destined for immortal glories is therefore logically and morally just as credible after looking through Herschel's forty feet reflector and reading La Place's Mecanique Celeste as it would be were this planet, suspended in a hollow dome, the entirety of material being.
Furthermore, we can reason only from the data we have; and, doing that, we should conclude, from the intrinsic and incomparable superiority of spirit to matter, that man and his kindred scattered in families over all the orbs of space were the especial objects of the infinite Author's care. They are fitted by their filial attributes to commune with Him in praise and love. They know the prodigious and marvellous works of mechanical nature; mechanical nature knows nothing. Man can return his Maker's blessing in voluntary obedience and thanks; matter is inanimate clay for the Potter's moulding. Turning from the gleaming wildernesses of star land to the intellect and heart, appreciating the infinite problems and hopes with which they deal and aspire, we feel the truth expressed by Wordsworth in his tremendous lines:
"I must, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. Not chaos, darkest pit of Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scoop'd out By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our minds, into the mind of man."
Is not one noble thought of truth, one holy emotion of love, one divine impulse of devotion, better than a whole planet of mud, a whole solar system of gas and dust? Who would not rather be the soul that gauges the deeps, groups the laws, foretells the movements, of the universe, writing down in a brief mathematical formula a complete horoscope of the heavens as they will appear on any given night thousands of years hence, than to be all that array of swooping systems? To think the world is to be superior to the world. That which appreciates is akin to that which makes; and so we are the Creator's children, and these crowding nebula, packed with orbs as thick as the ocean beach with sands, are the many mansions of the House fitted up for His abode and ours. An only prince would be of more consideration than a palace, although its foundation pressed the shoulders of Serpentarius, its turret touched the brow of Orion, and its wings reached from the Great Bear to the Phoenix. So a mind is of more importance than the material creation, and the moral condition of a man is of greater moment than the aspect of stellar firmaments.
Another illustration of the truth we are considering is to be drawn from the idealist theory, to which so many of the ablest thinkers of the world have given their devoted adhesion, that matter is merely phenomenal, no substantial entity, but a transient show preserved in appearance for some ulterior cause, and finally, at the withdrawal or suspension of God's volition, to return into annihilating invisibility as swiftly as a flash of lightning. The solid seeming firmaments are but an exertion of Divine force projected into vision to serve for a season as a theatre for the training of spirits. When that process is complete, in the twinkling of an eye the phantasmal exhibition of matter will disappear, leaving only the ideal realm of indestructible things, souls with their inward treasures remaining in their native sphere of the infinite, while the outward universe "Doth vanish like a ghost before the sun."
The same practical result may also be reached by a different path, may be attained by the road of physics as well as by that of transcendental metaphysics. For Newton has given in his Principia a geometrical demonstration of the infinite compressibility of matter. All the worlds, therefore, that cluster in yon swelling vault can be condensed into a single globe of the size of a walnut; and then, on that petty lump of apparent substance, the enfranchised soul might trample in an exultation of magnanimous scorn upon the whole universe of earths, and soar through its own unlimited dominion, Monarch of Immortality, the snatched glory of shrunken firmaments flashing from its deathless wings.
Finally, a proper comprehension of the idea of God will neutralize the skepticism and despondency sometimes stealthily nourished or crushingly impressed by contemplations of the immensity of nature. If one, from regarding the cold and relentless mechanism of the surrounding system, tremble for fear of there being no kind Overruler, let him gaze on the warm beauty that flushes the countenance of day, the mystic meditativeness that hangs on the pensive and starry brow of night, let him follow the commanding instincts of his own heart, and he will find himself clinging in irresistible faith and filial love to the thought of an infinite Father. If still the atheistic sentiment obtrudes upon him and oppresses him, let him observe how every spot of immensity whereon the eye of science has fallen is crowded with unnumbered amazing examples of design, love, beneficence, and he will perceive that the irrefragable lines of argument drawn through the boundless spaces of creation light up the stupendous contour of God and show the expression of his features to be love. It seems as though any man acquainted with the truths and magnitudes of astronomy, who, after seeing the star strewn abysses, would look in his mirror and ask if the image reflected there is that of the greatest being in the universe, would need nothing further to convince him that a God, the Creator, Preserver, Sovereign, lives. And then, if, mistakenly judging from his own limitations, he thinks that the particular care of all the accumulated galaxies of worlds, every world perhaps teeming with countless millions of conscious creatures, would transcend the possibilities even of God, a moment's reflection will dissolve that sophistry in the truth that God is infinite, and that to his infinite attributes globule and globe are alike, the oversight of the whole and of each part a matter of instantaneous and equal ease. Still further: if this abstract truth be insufficient to support faith and bestow peace, what will he say to the visible fact that all the races of beings, and all the clusters of worlds, from the motes in a sunbeam to the orbs of the remotest firmament, are now taken care of by Divine Providence? God now keeps them all in being and order, unconfused by their multiplicity, unoppressed by their magnitude, and not for an instant forgetting or neglecting either the mightiest or the least. Morbidly suspicious, perversely incredulous, must be the mind that denies, since it is so now in this state, that it may be so as well in the other state and forever! Grasping the conception of one God, who creates, rules, and loves all, man may unpresumptuously feel himself to be a child of the Infinite and a safe heir of immortality. Looking within and without, and soaring in fancy amidst the blue and starry altitudes interspersed with blazing suns and nebulous oceans, he may cry, from a sober estimate of all the experimental and phenomenal facts within his reach,
"Even here I feel,
Among these mighty things, that as I am
I am akin to God; that I am part
Of the use universal, and can grasp
Some portion of that reason in the which
The whole is ruled and founded; that I have
A spirit nobler in its cause and end,
Lovelier in order, greater in its powers,
Than all these bright and swift immensities."
Perhaps the force of these arguments may be better condensed and expressed by help of an individual illustration. While the pen is forming these words, the announcement of the death of Dr. Kane saddens the world. Alas that the gallant heart no longer beats, the story of whose noble generosity and indomitable prowess has just thrilled the dull nations of men of meaner mould! Who even though standing before a telescope under the full architecture of the heavens can believe that that maiden soul of heroism and devotion is now but an extinguished spark, that the love, honor, intelligence, self sacrificing consecration which enswathed him as with a saintly halo have all gone out? Turning from that pale form, stretched on the couch of death in fatal Cuba, through the receding gulfs of space where incomputable systems of worlds are wheeling on their eternal courses, and then looking back again from the noiseless glitter and awful bulk of the creation, do you despair of the immortal consequence of the poor sufferer whose fleshly moorings to existence are successively loosening at every gasp? Ah, remember that Matter and the Soul are not alone! Far above that clay bound, struggling soul, and far above those measureless, firmamental masses, is God, the Maker of them both, and the Lover of his child. Glancing in His omniscience down upon that human death couch, around which affectionate prayers are floating from every part of the earth, and from whose pallid occupant confiding sighs are rising to His ear, He sees the unutterable mysteries of yearning thought, emotion, and power, which are the hidden being of man, and which so ally the filial spirit to the parent Divinity. As beneath His gaze the faithful soul of Elisha Kane slowly extricating itself from its overwrought tabernacle, and also extricating itself from the holy network of heart strings which sixty millions of men speaking one speech have flung around him, if haply so they might retain him to earth to take their love and waiting honors rises into the invisible, seeking to return, bearing its virgin purity with it, to the bosom of God, will He overlook it, or carelessly spurn it into night, because the banks of stars are piled up so thick and high that they absorb His regards? My soul, come not thou into the counsels of them that think so! It should not be believed though astronomy were a thousand times astronomy. But it shall rather be thought that, ere now, the brave American has discovered the Mariner whom he sought, though sailing on far other seas, where there is no destroying winter and no need of rescue.
In association with the measureless spaces and countless worlds brought to light by astronomic science naturally arises the question whether the other worlds are, like our earth, peopled with responsible intelligences. In ancient times the stars were not generally thought to be worlds, but to be persons, genii or gods. At the dawn of creation "the morning stars sang together;" that is, "the sons of God shouted for joy." The stars were the living army of "Jehovah of hosts." At the time when the theological dogmas now prevalent were first conceived, the greatness and glory of the universe were supposed to centre on this globe. The fortunes of man wellnigh absorbed, it was imagined, the interest of angels and of God. The whole creation was esteemed a temporary theatre for the enactment of the sublime drama of the fall and redemption of man. The entire heavens with all their host were thought to revolve in satellite dependence around this stationary and regal planet. For God to hold long, anxious, repeated councils to devise means to save us, was not deemed out of keeping with the relative dignity of the earth and the human race. But at length the progress of discovery put a different aspect on the physical conditions of the problem. The philosopher began to survey man's habitation and history, and to estimate man's comparative rank and destiny, not from the stand point of a solitary planet dating back only a few thousand years, but in the light of millions of centuries of duration and from a position among millions of crowded firmaments whence our sun appears as a dim and motionless star. This new vision of science required a new construction of theology. The petty and monstrous notions of the ignorant superstition of the early age needed rectification. In the minds of the wise and devout few this was effected; but with the great majority the two sets of ideas existed side by side in unreconciled confusion and contradiction, as they even continue to do unto this day.