The source whence these meteors proceed is distinctly ascertained to be, as was already remarked with regard to the aerolites, a belt of small planetoids, revolving around the sun in a little less than a year, and in an orbit intersecting that of the earth, at such an angle, that every thirty-three years, or thereabouts, the earth meets the full tide on the twelfth of November. These meteors are true and proper stars. "All the observations made during the year 1853 agree with those of previous years, and confirm what may be regarded as sufficiently well established: the cosmical origin of shooting stars."[297]
3. The language of the Bible with respect to _the circuit of the sun_ is found to have antic.i.p.ated one of the most sublime discoveries of modern astronomy. True to the reality, as well as to the appearance of things, it is scientifically correct, without becoming popularly unintelligible.
There is a cla.s.s of aspirants to gentility who refuse to recognize any person not dressed in the style which they suppose to be fashionable among the higher cla.s.ses. A Glasgow butcher"s wife, in the Highlands, attired in all the magnificence of her satins, laces, and jewelry, returned the courteous salute of the little woman in the gingham dress and gray shawl with a contemptuous toss of the head, and flounced past, to learn, to her great mortification, that she had missed an opportunity of forming an acquaintance with the Queen. So a large cla.s.s of pretenders to science refuse to become acquainted with Bible truth, because it is not shrouded in the technicalities of science, but displays itself in the plain speech of the common people to whom it was given. They will have it, that because its author used common language, it was because he could not afford any other; and as he did not contradict every vulgar error believed by the people to whom he spoke, it was because he knew no better; and because the Hebrews knew nothing of modern discoveries in astronomy, geology, and the other sciences, and the Bible does not contain lectures on these subjects, the G.o.d of the Hebrews must have been equally ignorant, and the Bible consequently beneath the notice of a philosopher.
You will hear such persons most pertinaciously a.s.sert, that Moses believed all the absurdities of the Ptolemaic astronomy; that the earth is the immovable center, around which revolve the crystal sphere of the firmament, and the sun, and moon, and stars, which are attached to it, after the manner of lamps to a ceiling; and that he, and the world generally in his day, had not emerged from the grossest barbarism and ignorance of all matters of natural science. Yet these very people will probably tell you, in the same conversation, of the wonderful astronomical observations made by the Egyptians, ten thousand years before the days of Adam! So beautiful is the consistency of Infidel science. But when you inquire into the source of their knowledge of the philosophy of the ancients, you discover that they did not draw it from the writings of Moses, of which they betray the grossest ignorance, nor of any one who lived within a thousand years of Moses" time. Voltaire is their authority for all such matters. He transferred to the early Asiatics all the absurdities of the later Greek philosophers, and would have us believe that Moses, who wrote before these Greeks had learned to read, was indebted to them for his philosophy. Of the learning of the ancient patriarchs Voltaire does not tell them much, for a satisfactory reason.
Yet it might not have required much learning to infer, that the eyes, and ears, and nerves of men who lived ten times as long as we can, must have been more perfect than ours; that a man who could observe nature with such eyes, under a sky where Stoddart now sees the ring of Saturn, the crescent of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, with the naked eye,[298] and continue his observations for eight hundred years, would certainly acquire a better knowledge of the appearance of things than any number of generations of short-lived men, called away by death before they have well learned how to observe, and able only to leave the sh.e.l.l of their discoveries to their successors; that unless we have some good reason for believing that the mind of man was greatly inferior, before the flood, to what it is now, the antediluvians must have made a progress in the knowledge of the physical sciences, during the three thousand years which elapsed from the creation to the deluge, much greater than the nations of Europe have effected since they began to learn their A, B, C, about the same number of years ago; and that though Noah and his sons might not have preserved all the learning of their drowned contemporaries, they would still have enough to preserve them from the reproach of ignorance and barbarism; at least until their sons have succeeded in building a larger ship than the ark, or a monument equal to the Great Pyramid. The Astronomer Royal of Scotland[299] has demonstrated, that in this imperishable monument, erected four thousand years ago, the builders, who took care to keep it alone, of all the buildings of Egypt, free from idolatrous images or inscriptions, recorded with most laborious care, in multiples of the earth"s polar diameter, a metric system, including linear and liquid measures, and a system of weights based on a cubical measure of water of uniform temperature; which uniform temperature they took the utmost care to preserve. He shows further, that they were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, with the density of the earth, and with the earth"s distance from the sun; or at least calculated it at what proves to be nearly a mean of our discordant calculations; and that they were acquainted with problems just beginning to attract the attention of the science of Europe.
When we know that the Chaldeans taught the Egyptians the expansive power of steam, and the induction of electricity by pointed conductors; that from the most remote antiquity the Chinese were acquainted with decimal fractions, electro-magnetism, the mariner"s compa.s.s, and the art of making gla.s.s; that lenses have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, and that an artificial currency was in circulation in the first cities built after the flood;[300] that astronomical observations were made in China, with so much accuracy, from the deluge till the days of Yau, B. C. 2357, that the necessary intercalations were made for harmonizing the solar with the lunar year, and fixing the true period of 365-1/4 days; and that similar observations were conducted to a like result within a few years of the same remote period, in Babylon;--if the reader does not conclude that the world may have forgotten as much ancient lore during eighteen hundred years of idolatrous barbarism before the coming of Christ, as it has learned in the same number since, he will, at least, satisfy himself that the ancient patriarchs were not ignorant savages.[301] "Whole nations," says La Place, "have been swept from the earth, with their languages, arts, and sciences, leaving but confused ma.s.ses of ruins to mark the place where mighty cities stood. Their history, with a few doubtful traditions, has perished; _but the perfection of their astronomical observations marks their high antiquity, fixes the periods of their existence, and proves that even at that early time they must have made considerable progress in science_."[302] The Infidel theory, that the first men were savages, is a pure fiction, refuted by every known fact of their history.
That, however, is not the matter under discussion. We are not inquiring now, what Moses and the prophets _thought_, but what the Author of the Bible _told them to say_. The scribe writes as his employer dictates. "I will put my words in thy mouth," said G.o.d to Jeremiah. "My tongue is as the pen of a ready writer," said David. The prophets began, not with "Thus saith Isaiah," but "Thus saith the Lord." Unless the Word of G.o.d was utterly different from all his other works, it must transcend the comprehension of man in some respects. The profoundest philosopher is as ignorant of the cause of the vegetation of wheat as the mower who cuts it down; but their ignorance of the mysteries of organic force is no reason why the one may not harvest, and the other eat and live. Just so G.o.d"s prophets conveyed previous mysteries to the Church, of the full import of which they themselves were ignorant; even as Daniel heard but understood not. The prophets, to whom it was revealed, that they did not minister to themselves, but to us, inquired and searched diligently into the meaning of their own prophecies; which meaning, nevertheless, continued hid for ages and generations.[303] If the prophets of the old economy might be ignorant of the privileges of the gospel day, of which they prophesied, at G.o.d"s dictation, they might very well be ignorant, also, of the philosophy of creation, and yet write a true account of the facts, from his mouth.
Let us suppose, then, that the ancient Hebrews and their prophets were, if not quite as ignorant of natural science as modern Infidels are pleased to represent them, yet unacquainted with the discoveries of Herschel and Newton; and, as a necessary consequence, that their language was the adequate medium of conveying their imperfect ideas, containing none of the technicalities invented by philosophers to mark modern scientific discoveries; and that G.o.d desired to convey to them some religious instruction, through the medium of language; must we suppose it indispensable for this purpose that he should use strange words, and scientific phrases, the meaning of which would not be discovered for thirty-three hundred years? Could not Dr. Alexander write a Sabbath-school book, without filling it full of such phrases as "right ascension," "declination," "precession of the equinoxes," "radius vector," and the like? Or, if some wiseacre did prepare such a book, would it be very useful to children? Perhaps even we, learned philosophers of the nineteenth century, are not out of school yet. How many discoveries are yet to be made in all the sciences; discoveries which will doubtless render our fancied perfection as utterly childish to the philosophers of a thousand years hence as the astronomy of the Greeks seems to us; and demand the use of technical language, which would be as unintelligible to us as our scientific nomenclature would have been to Aristotle. If G.o.d may not use popular speech in speaking to the people of any given period, but must needs speak the technical language of perfect science, and if science is now, and always will be, of necessity, imperfect, we are led to the sage conclusion, that every revelation from G.o.d to man must always be unintelligible!
Does it necessarily follow, that because the Author of the Bible uses the common phrases, "sun rising," and "sun setting," in a popular treatise upon religion, that therefore he was ignorant of the rotation of the earth, and intended to teach that the sun revolved around it? He is certainly under no more obligation to depart from the common language of mankind, and introduce the technicalities of science into such a discourse, than mankind in general, and our objectors in particular, are to do the like in their common conversation. Now, I demand to know whether they are aware that the earth"s rotation on its axis is the cause of day and night? But do you ever hear any of them use such phrases as "earth rising," and "earth setting?" But if an Infidel"s daily use of the phrases, "_sun rising_," "_sun setting_," and the like, does not prove, either that he is ignorant of the earth"s rotation as the cause of that appearance, or that he intends to deceive the world by those phrases, why may not Almighty G.o.d be as well informed and as honest as the Infidel, though he also condescends to use the common language of mankind?
Do you ever hear astronomers, in common discourse, use any other language? I suppose Lieut. Maury, and Herschel, and Le Verrier, and Mitch.e.l.l, know a little of the earth"s rotation; but they, too, use the English tongue very much like other people, and speak of sunrise and sunset; yet n.o.body accuses them of believing in the Ptolemaic astronomy.
Hear the immortal Kepler, the discoverer of the laws of planetary revolution: "We astronomers do not pursue this science with the view of altering common language; but we wish to open the gates of truth, without affecting the vulgar modes of speech. We say with the common people, "The planets stand still, or go down;" "the sun rises, or sets;"
meaning only that so the thing appears to us, although it is not truly so, as all astronomers are agreed. How much less should we require that the Scriptures of divine inspiration, setting aside the common modes of speech, should shape their words according to the model of the natural sciences, and by employing a dark and inappropriate phraseology about things which surpa.s.s the comprehension of those whom it designs to instruct, perplex the simple people of G.o.d, and thus obstruct its own way toward the attainment of the far more exalted end to which it aims."
It is evident, then, that G.o.d not only may, _but must_, use popular language in addressing the people, in a work not professedly scientific; and that if this popular language be scientifically incorrect, such use of it neither implies his ignorance nor approval of the error.
But it may be worthy of inquiry whether this popular language of mankind, used in the Bible, be scientifically erroneous. If the language be intended to express an absolute reality, no doubt it is erroneous to say the sun rises and sets; but if it be only intended to describe an appearance, and the words themselves declare that intention, it can not be shown to be false to the fact. Now, when the matter is critically investigated, these phrases are found to be far more accurate than those of "earth rising," and "earth setting," which Infidels say the Author of the Bible should have used. For, as up and down have no existence in nature, save with reference to a spectator, and as the earth is always down with respect to a spectator on its surface, neither rising toward him, nor sinking from him, in reality, nor appearing to do so, unless in an earthquake, the improved phrases are false, both to the appearance of things, and to the cause of it. Whereas, our common speech, making no pretensions to describe the causes of appearances, can not contradict any scientific discovery of these causes, and therefore can not be false to the fact; while it truly describes all that it pretends to describe--the appearance of things to our senses. And so, after all the outcry raised against it by sciolists, the vulgar speech of mankind, used by the Author of the Bible, must be allowed to be philosophical enough for his purpose, and theirs; at least till somebody favors both with a better.
Though we are in no way concerned, then, to prove that every poetical figure in Scripture, and every popular ill.u.s.tration taken from nature, corresponds to the accuracy of scientific investigation, before we believe the Bible to be a revelation of our duty to G.o.d and man, yet it may be worth while to inquire, further, whether we really find upon its sacred pages such crude and egregious scientific errors as Infidels allege. We have seen in the last chapter, that they are not able to read even its first chapter without blundering. Indeed, they generally boast of their ignorance of its contents. It is a very good rule to take them at their word, and when they quote Scripture, to take it for granted _that they quote it wrong_, unless you know the contrary. The first thing for you to do when an Infidel tells you the Bible says so and so, is to get the Book, and see whether it does or not. You will generally find that he has either misquoted the words, or mistaken their meaning, from a neglect of the context; or perhaps has both misquoted and mistaken. Then, when you are satisfied of the correct meaning of the text, and he tells you that it is contrary to the discoveries of science, the next point is to ask him, _How do you know?_ You will find his knowledge of science and Scripture about equal. Both these tests should be applied to scientific objections to the Bible, as they are all composed of equal parts of biblical blunders, and philosophical fallacies.
In the objection under consideration, for instance, both statements are wrong. The Bible does not represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, or as immovable in s.p.a.ce at all. It does not represent the sun and stars as revolving around it. Nor are the facts of astronomy more correctly stated. It is not the Bible, but our objector, that is a little behind the age in his knowledge of science.
If we inquire for those texts of Scripture which represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, we shall be referred to the figurative language of the Psalms, the book of Job, and other poetical parts of Scripture, which speak of the "foundations of the earth," "the earth being established," "abiding for ever," and the like, when the slightest attention to the language would show _that it is intended to be figurative_. The acc.u.mulation of metaphors and poetical images in some of these pa.s.sages is beautiful and grand in the highest degree; but none, save the most stupid reader, would ever dream of interpreting them literally. Take, for instance, Psalm civ. 1-6, where, in one line, the world is described as G.o.d"s house, with beams, and chambers, and foundations; but in the very next line the figure is changed, and it is viewed as an infant, covered with the deep, as with a garment.
"Bless, the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my G.o.d, thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honor and majesty: Who coverest thyself with light, as with a garment; Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; _Who layeth the beams of his chambers upon the waters_: Who walketh upon the wings of the wind: Who maketh his angels spirits: His ministers a flaming fire: _Who laid the foundations of the earth, That it should not be removed for ever_.
Thou coveredst it with the deep, as with a garment: The waters stood above the mountains."
But if any one is so gross as to insist on the literality of such a pa.s.sage, and to allege that it teaches the absolute immobility of the earth, let him tell us what sort of immobility the third verse teaches, and how a building could be stable, the beams of whose chambers are _laid upon the waters_--the chosen emblems of instability. "He hath founded it upon the seas: he hath established it upon the floods," says the same poet, in another Psalm--xxiv 1. This, and all other expressions quoted as declaring the immobility of the earth _in s.p.a.ce_, are clearly proved, both by the words used, and the sense of the context, to refer to an entirely different idea: namely, _its duration in time_. Thus, Ecclesiastes i. 4, "One generation pa.s.seth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth forever," is manifestly contrasting the duration of earth with the generations of short-lived men, and has no reference to motion in s.p.a.ce at all.
Again, in Psalm cxix. 89-91, our objectors find another Bible declaration of the immobility of the earth in s.p.a.ce:
"For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven; Thy faithfulness is unto all generations; Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.
_They continue to this day_, according to thine ordinances."
The same permanence is here ascribed to the heavens (to which, as our objectors argue, the Bible ascribes a perpetual revolution) as to the earth. The next verse explains this permanence to be _continuance to this day_; durability, not immobility. That the word _establish_ does not necessarily imply fixture, is evident from its application, in Proverbs viii. 28: "He _established_ the clouds," the most fleeting of all things. Nor is the Hebrew word _kun_ (whence our English word, cunning), inconsistent with motion; else, the Psalmist had not said that "a good man"s footsteps are _established_ by the Lord."[304] "He _established_ my goings." Wise arrangement is the idea, not permanent fixture.
The same remarks apply to Psalm xciii. 1; xcvi. 10; 1 Chronicles xvi.
30, and many other similar pa.s.sages.
"The world is established, that it can not be moved; Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting."
Where the establishment, which is contrasted with the impossible removal, and which explains its import, is evidently not a local fixing of some material seat, in one place, but the everlasting duration of G.o.d"s authority. The idea is not that of position in s.p.a.ce, at all, but of continued duration.
s.p.a.ce does not allow us to quote all the pa.s.sages which refer to this subject; but after an examination of every pa.s.sage in the Bible usually referred to in this connection, and of a mult.i.tude of others bearing upon it, I have no hesitation in saying, that it does not contain a single text which a.s.serts or implies the immobility of the earth in s.p.a.ce. The notion was drawn from the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and the superst.i.tions of popery, but was never gathered from the Word of G.o.d.
But it is alleged that other pa.s.sages of Scripture do plainly and unequivocally express the motion of the sun, and his course in a circuit; as, for instance, the Nineteenth Psalm:
"In them he hath set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it."
And again, in the account of Joshua"s miracle, in the tenth chapter of his book, it is quite evident that the writer supposed the sun to be in motion, in the same way as the moon, for he commanded them both to stand still: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." Now, it is said, if the writer had known what he was about, he would have known that the sun was already standing still, and would have told the earth to stop its rotation. And if the earth had obeyed the command, we should never have heard of the miracle; for, as the earth rotates at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, the concussion produced by such a stoppage would have projected Joshua, and Israelites, and Amorites, beyond the moon, to pursue their quarrel among the fixed stars.
When we hear men of some respectability bring forward such stuff, we are constrained to wonder, not merely were they ever at school, but if they ever traveled in a railroad car, or whether they suppose their hearers to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that G.o.d is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for philosophy, because they found it in the writings of an Infidel scoffer, and of a Neological professor of theology[305]--an edifying example of Infidel credulity!
Let it be noticed, that in neither of these texts, nor in any other portion of Scripture, does the Bible say a single word about the revolution of the sun _round the earth_, as the common center of the universe; on which, however, the whole stress of the objection is laid.
The pa.s.sages do not prove what they are adduced to prove. They speak of the sun"s motion, and of the sun"s...o...b..t, _but they do not say that the earth is the center of that orbit_. These texts, then, do not prove the Author of the Bible ignorant of the system of the universe.
The objection is based upon utter ignorance of one of the most important and best attested discoveries of modern astronomy; the grand motion of the sun and solar system through the regions of s.p.a.ce, and the dependence of the rotation of all the orbs composing it, upon that motion. It is not the Author of the Bible who is ignorant of the discoveries of modern astronomy--when he speaks of the orbit of the sun, and his race from one end of the heavens to the other, and of the need of a miraculous interposition to stop his course for a single day--but his correctors, who have ventured to decry the statements of a Book which commands the respect of such astronomers as Herschel and Rosse, while ignorant of those elements of astronomy which they might have learned from a perusal of the books used by their children in our common schools. For the benefit of such, however, I will present a brief explanation of the grounds upon which astronomers are as universally agreed upon the belief of the sun"s motion around a center of the firmament, as they are upon the belief of the revolution of the earth round the sun.
When you are pa.s.sing in a carriage, at night, through the street of a city lighted up by gas-lamps in the streets, and lights irregularly dispersed in the windows, or pa.s.sing in a ferry-boat, from one such city to another, at a short distance from it, you observe that the lights which you are leaving appear to draw closer and closer together, while those toward which you are approaching widen out, and seem to separate from each other. If the night were perfectly dark, so that you could see nothing but the lights, you could certainly know not only that you were in motion, but also to what point you were moving, by carefully watching their appearances. So, if all the fixed stars were absolutely fixed, and the sun and planets, including our earth, were moving in any direction--say to the north--then the stars toward which we were moving would seem to widen out from each other, and those which we were leaving would seem to close up; so that the s.p.a.ce which appeared between any two stars in the south, in a correct map of the heavens, a hundred years ago, would be smaller, and that between any two stars in the north would be larger, than the s.p.a.ce between the same stars upon a correct map now. Now, such changes in the apparent positions of stars are actually observed. The stars do not appear in the same places now as they did a hundred years ago.
The fixed stars, then, are either drifting past our solar system, which alone remains fixed; or, the fixed stars are all actually at rest, and our sun is drifting through them; or, our solar system and the so-called fixed stars are both in motion. One or other of these suppositions must be the fact. The first is simply the old Ptolemaic absurdity, only transferring the center of the universe to the sun. The second is contrary to the observed fact, that mult.i.tudes of the stars, which were supposed to be fixed, are actually revolving around each other, in systems of double, triple and multiple suns. And both are contrary to the first principles of gravitation; for, as every particle of matter attracts every other, directly as the ma.s.s, and inversely as the square of the distance, if any one particle of matter in the universe is in motion, the square of its distance from every other particle varies, and its attraction is increased in one direction, and diminished in another; and so every particle of matter in free s.p.a.ce, as far as the force of gravitation extends, will be put in motion too. But our earth, and the planets, and the double and triple stars, are in motion, and the law of gravitation extends to every known part of the universe; therefore every known particle of matter in the universe is in motion too, our sun included.
The third supposition, then, is most indisputably true; our solar system, and all the heavenly bodies, are in motion. To this conclusion all the observed facts conform. The Bible does say that the sun moves, and moves in a curve. All mathematicians prove that it must of necessity do so. All astronomers a.s.sert that it does so. The unanimous verdict of the scientific world is thus rendered by Nichol: "_As to the subject itself, the grand motion of the sun, as well as its present direction, must be received now as an established doctrine of astronomy._"[306] But the discovery was antic.i.p.ated, three thousand years ago, by the Author of the Bible.
But, as will readily be perceived, the difficulty of determining either the direction or the rate of this motion is immensely increased in this case; for we are now not like persons riding in a carriage, watching the fixed lights in the street to determine our direction and rate of progress; but we are watching the lamps of a mult.i.tude of carriages, moving at various distances, and with various velocities, and, for anything we can tell at first sight, in various directions. We are on board a steamer, and are watching the lights of a mult.i.tude of other steamers, also in motion; and it is not easy to find out, in the darkness, how either they or we are going. If each were pursuing its own independent course, without any common object or destination, the confusion would be so great that we could learn nothing of the rate or direction either of our own motion or theirs.
But astronomers are not content to believe that the universe is governed by accident. The whole science is based upon the a.s.sumption, that a presiding mind has impressed the stamp of order and regularity upon the whole cosmos. They are deeply convinced that G.o.d"s law extends to all G.o.d"s creation; that all his works display his intelligence, as well as his power, and proceed according to a wise plan. Having seen that all the stellar motions previously known are orderly motions, in circular or elliptical orbits, and that the most of the solid bodies belonging to our own system revolve in one direction, they reasoned from a.n.a.logy, that this might be the case with the sun and the fixed stars, and went to work with great diligence, to see whether it was or not; and, by comparing a great mult.i.tude of observations, ancient and modern, made both in the northern and southern hemispheres, and on all sorts of stars, they have come to the conclusion, that our sun, and all the bodies of the solar system, are flying northward, at the rate of three millions three hundred and thirty-six thousand geographical miles a day--five thousand times faster than a railway express train--toward the constellation Hercules, in R. A. 259 Dec. 35.
Further, as the direction of this motion is slowly and regularly changing, just as the direction of the head of a steamer in wearing, or of a railway train running a curve, it is certain that the sun is moving, not in a straight line, but in a curve. The revolution of the sun in such an orbit was known to the Author of the Bible when he wrote, "_his circuit_ is to the end of heaven." The direction of the circ.u.mference of a circle being known, that of its center can be found; for the radius is always a tangent to the circ.u.mference, and the intersection of two of these radii will be the center; so that, if we certainly knew the sun"s...o...b..t to be circular, or nearly so, we could calculate the center. But as we do not certainly know its form, we can not certainly calculate the center; we can only come near it. And as we know that the line which connects the circ.u.mference with the center of the sun"s...o...b..t, runs through the group of stars known as the Pleiades, or the Cl.u.s.ter; and as all the stars along that line seem to move in the same direction--a different direction from that of the stars in other regions, just as they must do if they and we were revolving around that group--Argelander and others have concluded, with a high degree of probability, that the grand center around which the sun and our firmament revolve, is that constellation which the Author of the Bible, more than three thousand years ago, called _kyme_--_the pivot_.
It would require a greater knowledge of electro-magnetism than most of my readers possess, to explain the connection of the earth"s rotation with the sun"s grand movement. I will merely state the facts.
Electro-magnetism is induced by friction. The regions of s.p.a.ce are not empty, but filled with an ether, whose undulations produce light; and this ether is sufficiently dense to r.e.t.a.r.d the motions of comets. The friction, produced by the rapid pa.s.sage of the sun and solar system through this ether, must be immense, and is one source of electricity, and the princ.i.p.al source of electro-magnetism. This kind of electricity differs from the other kinds, in that _its action is always at right angles to the current, and tends to produce rotation in any wheel, cylinder, or sphere, along whose axis it flows_.[307] The sun, and all the planets, traveling in the direction of their poles, the current is of course in the direction of the axis; and the result is, that while the sun moves along his grand course, he and all the bodies of the system will rotate, by the influence of the electro-magnetism generated by that motion; and if he stops, his and their rotation stops too. Day and night on earth are produced by the sun"s motion causing the earth"s rotation. You can see the principle ill.u.s.trated by the child who runs along the street with his windmill, to create a current, which will make it revolve. The Author of the Bible made no mistake when, desiring to lengthen the day, he commanded the sun to stand still. It is not the Creator, but his correctors, who are ignorant of the mechanism of the universe.
Thus, these long-misunderstood and much-a.s.sailed Scriptures are not only vindicated, but far more than vindicated, by the progress of astronomical discovery. It not only proves the language of the Bible to be correct; it a.s.sures us that it is divine. The same Hand which formed the stars to guide the simple peasant to his dwelling, at the close of day, and to lead the mighty intellects of Newton and of Herschel among the mysteries of the universe, formed those expressions which, to the peasant"s eye, describe the apparent reality, and, to the astronomer"s reason, demonstrate the reality of the appearance of the heavens, and are thus, alike to peasant and philosopher, the _oracles of G.o.d_.
Nor is this the only instance of such Bible oracles. Thousands of years before philosophers knew anything of the formation of dew, Moses described it exactly, and noticed how it differed from the rain which drops down, while the dew evaporates. "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall _distill_ as the dew."--Deuteronomy x.x.xii. 2.
Solomon described the cycloidal course of the wind, and recorded it in Ecclesiastes long before Admiral Fitzroy"s discovery; as he also antic.i.p.ated the doctrine of aqueous circulation in his pregnant proverb: "Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."--Ecclesiastes i. 7. Job declared the law of pneumatics when he declared that "G.o.d maketh _weight_ for the winds." Long before Madler, the celebrated Russian astronomer, published his remarkable opinion: "I regard the Pleiades as the central group to the whole astral system, and the fixed stars, even to its outer limits, marked by the Milky Way; and I regard Alcyone as that star of all others, composing the group which is favored by most of the probabilities as being the true central sun of the universe," Moses tells us they were known as "the hinge, or pivot,"
of the heavens; and G.o.d asks, "Canst thou bind the secret influences of the Pleiades?" Though Peter was no geologist, and probably incapable of calculating the ratio of the central heat, he tells us that the heavens and the earth are "reserved unto fire," literally, "stored with fire."
Equally in advance of modern medical science, thousands of years before our modern discoveries, the Author of the Bible declared that "the life is in the blood," and spoke of the slow combustion of starvation exactly in the language of the most recent physiology, "they shall be _burnt_ with hunger, and devoured with burning heat."--Deuteronomy x.x.xii. 24.
Here we have scientific truth not discovered for centuries by our men of science, but revealed by prophets--scientific discovery, in advance of science--predictions of the future progress of the human intellect, no less than revelations of the existing motions of the stars. He who wrote these oracles knew that the creatures to whom he gave them would one day unfold their hidden meaning (else he had not so written them), and in the light of scientific discovery, see them to be as truly divine predictions of the advance of science, as the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, read among the ruins of Thebes or Babylon, are seen to be predictions of the ruin of empires. Man"s discoveries fade into insignificance in the presence of such unfolding mysteries; and we are led to our Bibles, with the prayer, "Open mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law."
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 ill.u.s.tration was as well calculated as the promise to test the character of that faith which takes G.o.d"s Word as sufficient evidence of things not seen; for, if the promise was a trying test of faith, so was the ill.u.s.tration. Before this, G.o.d 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 seash.o.r.e; the well-known symbol of a mult.i.tude beyond all power of calculation. To couple the stars of heaven with the sand upon the seash.o.r.e 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 a.s.sure 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 seash.o.r.e--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 G.o.d delights to test the faith of his people, and to stumble the pride of fools, by presenting this mysterious truth, of the innumerable mult.i.tude 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: "G.o.d 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 const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed before his eye. In another portion, he found three hundred and thirty-one thousand stars in a single cl.u.s.ter.[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."