Chapter XII: Telescopic Views of Scripture (2)

4. The ancient charter of the Church was written in the language of one of the most recent astronomical discoveries, thirty-six hundred years before Herschel and Rosse enabled us to understand its full significance: "He brought him forth abroad, and said unto him, _Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be._"[308]

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:

"Hast thou an arm like God?
Canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades,
Or loosen the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons?
Canst thou guide Arcturus and his sons?[316]
He telleth the number of the stars:
He calleth them all by their names.
Great is our Lord, and of great power;
His understanding is infinite."[317]

Thus, nobly does science vindicate Scripture, and display the wisdom and power of the Lord of Hosts, whose kingdom extends through all space, and endures through all duration. He who called these countless hosts of glorious orbs into being is abundantly able to multiply, to an equally incalculable number, the humble sands which line the oceans of terrestrial grace, the brilliant stars which shall yet adorn the heavens of celestial glory. All, of every nation, who shall partake of Abraham's faith, are Abraham's children. They are Christ's, and so Abraham's seed, and heirs, according to this promise.[318] When the great multitude, which no man can number, out of every nation, and tongue, and people, stand before the throne of God, and cause the many mansions of our Father's house to re-echo the shout, "Salvation to our God which sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb," the answering hallelujahs of the most distant orbs shall expound the purport of that solemn oath to Abraham and Abraham's seed: "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and _in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore_."[319]

5. It is not probable that the mysteries of the distant heavens, _or of those future glories of the redeemed which the Bible employs them to symbolize_, will ever be fully explored by man, or adequately apprehended in the present state of being. But it is most certain that God would not have employed the mysteries of astronomy so frequently as the symbols of the mysteries of the glory to be revealed, had there not been some correspondence between the things which eye hath not seen, and these patterns shown in the mount. So habitual, indeed, is the Scripture use of these visible heavens as the types of all that is exalted, pure, cheering, and glorious, that, to most Christians, the word has lost its primary meaning, and the idea first suggested to their minds by the word _heaven_ is that of future glory; yet their views of the locality and physical adornments of the many mansions of their Father's house are dim and shadowy, just because they do not acquaint themselves sufficiently with the divine descriptions in the Bible, and the divine illustrations in the sky. The Bible would be better understood were the heavens better explored. "I go," said Jesus, "to prepare a _place_ for you." The bodies of the saints, raised on the resurrection morn, will need a _place_ on which to stand. The body of the Lord, which his disciples handled, and "saw that a spirit had not flesh and bones, as they saw him have," is now resident in a place. Where He is, there shall his people be also. Why, then, when the Bible employs all that is beauteous in earth, and glorious in heaven, to describe the adornments of the palace of the King of kings, should we hesitate to believe that the power and wisdom of God are not exhausted in this little earth of ours, but that other worlds may as far transcend ours in glory, as many of them do in magnitude?--or, to allow that the glorious visions of Ezekiel and John were not views of nonentities, or mere visions of clouds, or of some incomprehensible symbols of more incomprehensible spiritualities, but actual views of the existing glories of some portion of the universe, presented to us as vividly as the dullness of our minds and the earthliness of our speech will permit? It is certain that the recent progress of astronomical discovery has revealed celestial scenery which illustrates some of the most mysterious of these visions.

It has long been known, that "one star differeth from another star in glory," and that the orbs of heaven shine with various colors. Sirius is white, Arcturus red, and Procyon yellow. The telescope shows all the smaller stars in various colors. Under the clear skies of Syria their brilliance is vastly greater than in our climate. "_One star shines like a ruby, another as an emerald, and the whole heavens sparkle as with various gems._"[320] But the discovery of the double and triple stars has added a new harmony of colors to these coronets of celestial jewels. These stars generally display the complementary colors. If the one star displays a color from the red end of the spectrum, the other is generally of the corresponding shade, from the violet end. For instance, in O2 Cygni, the large star is yellow, and the two smaller stars are blue; and so in others, through all the colors of the rainbow. "It may be easier suggested in words," says Sir John Herschel, "than conceived in imagination, what a variety of illumination two stars--a red and a green, or a yellow and a blue one--must afford a planet circulating around either, and what cheering contrasts and grateful vicissitudes a red and a green day, for instance, alternating with a white one, and with darkness, must arise from the presence or absence of one, or other, or both, from the horizon."[321] But suppose one of the globular clusters--for instance, that in the constellation Hercules--thus constituted; its unnumbered thousands of suns, wheeling round central worlds, and exhibiting their glories to their inhabitants; "skies blazing, with grand orbs scattered regularly around, and with a profusion to which our darker heavens are strangers;" the overhead sky, seen from the interior regions of the cluster, _must appear gorgeous beyond description_. In the strictest literality it might be said to the dwellers in such a cluster, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself." The surrounding walls of such a celestial palace must seem indeed "garnished with all manner of precious stones." Sapphire, emerald, sardius, chrysolite, and pearl, must seem but dim mirrors of its glorious refulgence. Under its ever rising suns the gates need not be shut at all by day, "for there shall be no night there." That glorious place now exists, though far away.

But the Lord of these hosts has said, "Behold, I come quickly." He will not tarry. A thousand times faster than the swiftest chariot, our solar system and the surrounding firmament wing their flight toward that same glorious cluster in Hercules. As our firmament approaches, under the guidance of Omnipotent wisdom, it too must fly to meet our sun, with a velocity increasing with an incalculable ratio. The celestial city will then be seen to descend from heaven. Once within the sphere of its attractions, our sun and surrounding planets will feel their power. Their ancient orbits and accustomed revolutions must give way to the higher power. Old things must pass away, and all things become new. A new heaven, no less than a new earth, will form the dwelling of righteousness.

These are no longer the visions of prophecy merely, but the sober calculations of mathematical science, based upon a foundation as solid as the attraction of gravitation, and as wide as the existence of that ether whose undulations convey the light of the most distant stars; for, so surely as that attraction is efficient, must all the firmaments of the heavens be drawn more closely together; and as certainly as they revolve not in empty space, but in a medium capable of retarding Encke's comet three days in every revolution, must that retarding medium bring their revolutions to a close. "And so," said Herschel, casting his eye fearlessly toward future infinities, "we may be certain that the stars in the Milky Way will be gradually compressed, through successive stages of accumulation, until they come up to what may be called the ripening period of the globular cluster." Unnumbered ages may be occupied with such a grand evolution of celestial progress, beyond our power of calculation; but will the changes of created things, even then, have come to an end? Hear again the voice, not of the prophet, but of the astronomer: "Around us lie stabilities of every order; but it is _stability_ only that we see, not _permanence_." As the course of our inquiry has already amply illustrated, even majestic systems, that at first appear final and complete, are found to resolve themselves into mere steps or phases of still loftier progress. Verily, it is an astonishing world! Change rising above change--cycle growing out of cycle, in majestic progression--each new one ever widening, like the circles that wreathe from a spark of flame, enlarging as they ascend, finally to become lost in the empyrean! And if all that we see, from earth to sun, and from sun to universal star-work--that wherein we best behold images of eternity, immortality and God--if that is only a state or space of a course of being rolling onward evermore, what must be the Creator, the Preserver, the Guide of all!--He at whose bidding these phantasms came from nothingness, and shall again disappear;--whose name, amid all things, alone is _Existence_--I AM THAT I AM?

"Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth,
And the heavens are the works of thy hands;
They shall perish,
But thou shalt endure;
Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment:
As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed;
But thou art the same,
And thy years shall have no end.
The children of thy servants shall continue,
And their seed shall be established before thee."

Psalm cii. 25

"And I saw a new heaven, and a new earth;
For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away,
And there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
Coming down from God out of heaven,
Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying,
Behold the tabernacle of God is with men,
And he will dwell with them,
And they shall be his people,
And God himself shall be with them, and be their God."

Revelation xxi.

* * * * *

Reader, is this glorious heaven your inheritance? Is this unchangeable Jehovah your God? Are you looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God? Is it your daily prayer, Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly?

FOOTNOTES:

[283] Kendall's Uranography, 268.

[284] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1856, p. 380.

[285] Ibid. 1852, p. 376.

[286] Ibid. 1856, p. 377.

[287] Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 198-215.

[288] Judges, chap. v.

[289] Jeremiah, chap. x.

[290] Some of my readers may deem any notice of such a subject, in the nineteenth century, entirely unnecessary; but having lived for some years within sight of the dwelling of a woman who publicly advertised herself in the newspapers as a professor of astrology, and seen the continual flow of troubled minds to the promised light--the humble serving-girl stealing up the side entrance, and the princely chariot discharging its willing dupes at the door, and rolling hastily away, to await them at the corner--I know of a certainty that folly is not yet dead. There are women, aye, and men too, who are above the folly of reading the Bible, but just wise enough to pay five dollars for, and spend hours in the study of an uncouth astrological picture, representing a collocation of the stars, which was never witnessed by any astronomer. There are men who would not give way to the superstition of supposing that their destiny was regulated by the will of Almighty God, yet who believe that every living creature's fate is regulated by the aspect of the stars at the hour of his nativity; the same stars always causing the same period of life and mode of death; though every day's experience testifies the contrary. The same stars presided over the birth of the poor soldier, who perished in an instant at Austerlitz; of his imperial master, who pined for years in St. Helena; of the old gentleman who died in his own bed, of gout; and of the batch of puppies, whereof old Towser was the only surviving representative, the other nine having found their fate in the horse-pond, in defiance of the controlling stars. They were all born at the same hour, and under the same auspices, and destined to the same fate, by the laws of astrology. Yet half a dozen professors of astrology find patrons enough in each of our great cities to enable them to live and to pay for advertising in the daily papers.

[291] Judges, chap. v.

[292] Dick's Celestial Scenery, p. 57, Applegate's edition, where many such instances are related.

[293] Vaughn's Report to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1855, p. 364.

[294] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 382.

[295] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 122; Vol. IV. p. 569.

[296] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 383.

[297] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, p. 361.

[298] Letter to Herschel, from Oroomiah, in Persia--Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, p. 367.

[299] _Life and Work in the Great Pyramid_, by Piazzi Smyth, F. R. S., LL. D.

[300] "These tablets (of unbaked clay, with inscriptions, found in the tombs of Erech, the city of Nimrod--Genesis, chap. x. 10--and deciphered by Rawlinson) were, in point of fact, the equivalent of our bank notes, and prove that a system of artificial currency prevailed in Babylon and Persia at an unprecedentedly early age; centuries before the introduction of paper and writing."

_Rawlinson, in News of the Churches, February, 1858, p. 50._

[301] Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Egyptians, Vol. III. p. 106; Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 173, 182; Chinese Repository, Vol. IX. p. 573; Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. II. p. 147.

[302] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 82.

[303] Daniel, chap. xii. 8. 1 Peter, chap. i. 10. Ephesians, chap. i. 3.

[304] Psalm xl. 1, and xxxvii. 23, margin.

[305] M. Voltaire; M. Cheneviere; Theol. Essays, Vol. I. p. 456.

[306] Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 139; Herschel's Outlines, 380; Kendall's Uranography, 205.

[307] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 171, 337, 315; Architecture of the Heavens, 286.

[308] Genesis, chap. xv. 5.

[309] Cosmos I. 140.

[310] Ehrenberg computes that there are forty-one millions of the shells of animalculæ in a cubic inch of Bilier Slate.

[311] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1860, p. 341.

[312] Psalm cxlvii. 4.

[313] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, 59; Herschel's Outlines.

[314] Architecture of the Heavens, 62.

[315] Architecture of the Heavens, 64. These unresolved milky streaks and patches have since been discovered to be true nebulæ, or phosphoric clouds, in some way connected with their adjacent stars.

[316] Architecture of the Heavens, 144.

[317] Job, chap. xxxviii. 31. Psalm cxlvii. 4.

[318] Genesis, chap. xxii. 16.

[319] Galatians, chap. iii. 14, 29. Gen. xxii. 16, 17.

[320] Architecture of the Heavens, 217.

[321] Architecture of the Heavens, 77, 130.