Away yonder, I catch a faint glimmer of another stupendous world, as it swings in its tireless and prodigious journey. Old Uranus, 1,780,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in eighty-four years, going at the speed of two hundred and fifty miles an hour.
As the distance of the planets from the sun increases, their velocity in their orbit correspondingly decreases.
I say is that all? I hurry to Chicago and take the Northwestern. I rush out to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I climb into the Yerkes observatory, and I turn the most ponderous telescope in the world to the skies, and away out on the frontier of the universe, on the very outer rim of the world, I catch a faint glimmer of Neptune, 2,790,000,000 miles away. Travels around the sun once in one hundred and sixty-four years, going at the speed of two hundred and ten miles an hour. If I could step on the deck of a battleship and aim a 13-inch gun, and that projectile will travel 1,500 miles in a minute, it would take it three hundred and sixty years to reach that planet.
Away out yonder is Alpha Centauri. If I would attach my palace car to a ray of light and go at the speed of 192,000 miles a second, it would take me three years to reach that planet. An express train, going thirty miles an hour, would be 80,000,000 years pulling into Union depot at Alpha Centauri.
Yonder, the Polar or the North star. Traveling at a rate of speed of 192,000 miles a second, it would take me forty-five years to reach that planet. And if I would go to the depot and buy a railroad ticket to the North star, and pay three cents a mile, it would cost me $720,000,000 for railroad fare to go to that planet.
"Oh, God, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" And the fool, the fool, the fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." I'm not an infidel, because I am no fool. "The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." I don't believe an infidel ever looked through a telescope or studied astronomy.
"What is man, that thou are mindful of him?" These are days when it is "Big man, little God." These are days when it is gigantic "I," and pigmy "God." These are days when it is "Ponderous man, infinitesimal God."
There are 1,400,000,000 people on earth. You are one of that number, so am I. None of us amount to much. What do you or I amount to out of 1,400,000,000 people? If I could take an auger and bore a hole in the top of the sun, I could pour into the sun 1,400,000,000 worlds the size of the planet upon which we live, and there would be room in the sun for more. Then think of the world, and God made that world, the God that you cuss, the God that wants to keep you out of hell, the God whose Son you have trampled beneath your feet.
If you take 1,400,000,000, multiply it by 1,400,000, multiply that by 1,000,000, multiply that by millions, multiply that by infinity, that's God. If you take 1,400,000,000, subtract 1,400,000, subtract millions, subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract on down, that's you. If ever a man appears like a consummate ass and an idiot, it's when he says he don't believe in a God or tries to tell God his plan of redemption don't appeal to him.
God's Infinite Love