§ II.—CHAPTER III.

COSMICAL AND TERRESTRIAL MAGNITUDES DIVINE POWER.

IN the two previous chapters we have dwelt mainly on the celestial and terrestrial structures, as evincing an intelligent First Cause. It is order, as such, we have been contemplating. We have glanced but slightly at the peculiar evidence which the phenomena both of astronomy and geology furnish of immense power concerned in their creation and maintenance. So striking and impressive, however, is this evidence, that it seems right to. devote a brief chapter to its statement. The phenomena in question bring before us, more signally than any other, an all-powerful as well as wise Being.

It is of course obvious, according to our whole plan of treatment, that we do not present this illustrative evidence as a logical proof of the Divine omnipotence. We do not profess to find the infinite in the mere bewildering magnitude and duration of the finite. This was indicated already in our introductory remarks. Yet it deserves to be noticed, that the only conceivable way in which the infinite could be 114exhibited and impressively set forth to finite beings, is by such an array of phenomena as the sciences of astronomy and geology unfold to us—namely, by an accumulated display of vast magnitudes and apparently interminable durations. If we do not amid such views logically reach the infinite, we are yet carried onwards to it, on the wings of an imagination which in vain essays to grasp the immensity of the fields of contemplation open to it.

The simple extent of the celestial space, briefly exhibited in our first chapter, is well calculated to fill our minds with vast ideas of Divine power. Looking out from beyond our earth, the sphere of observation extends immeasurably on all sides. Inexhaustible to the naked eye, it is equally inexhaustible when, by the aid of the telescope, we are carried into regions so inconceivably remote that the mind sinks utterly overwhelmed by the spectacle. Neptune circles round the sun at a distance of nearly three thousand millions of miles; the nearest fixed star (α Centauri) is seven hundred times farther removed; while the bright Dog-star, according to the parallax given to it by Professor Henderson, is almost four times farther off than a Centauri, or about eighty billions of miles! These distances, however, inconceivable as they are, are nothing to those of the nebulous clusters which people the more inaccessible tracts of space, whose light, it is stated, can only reach us in thousands and even millions of years.⁵⁶⁵⁶   Sir J. HERSCHEL’S Astronomy, 590. There is, in short, no limit to creation. In the expanse of cosmical phenomena we have assuredly, therefore, 115the only visible type of the infinite that it was possible for us to possess.

If from the mere boundless expanse of the cosmical regions we turn to contemplate some of the special magnitudes and velocities with which they make us familiar, the attribute of power will perhaps display itself even more strikingly. Let the mass of our earth, possessing a diameter of about eight thousand miles, and of which we may be supposed to have some not indistinct conception, be taken as our starting-point. Enormous as it is, it dwindles into a mere point among the stellar magnitudes, and becomes even small beside its planetary companions. Jupiter is fourteen hundred times larger, and Saturn nearly the same size, encircled by a gorgeous envelope or ring which, it has been said, would enclose five hundred worlds as large as ours.⁵⁷⁵⁷   DICK’S Celestial Scenery, p. 274. The mass of the sun itself is three hundred and fifty-four thousand nine hundred and thirty-six times that of the earth. It would not only fill up the orbit of the moon, but would extend nearly as far again. But this is as nothing compared with the mass of some of the stars. Who can conjecture the magnitude of a body which would fill the vast orbit of the earth? But the bright star in Lyra has a diameter which, it has been said, would fill even that orbit.”⁵⁸⁵⁸   HARRIS’S Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 145. And among the nebulous stars some are supposed to be of even greater dimensions.

Let us think, then, of the force concerned in the movements of such enormous masses. A cannon-ball projected 116from the mouth of a gun moves at the rate of about a thousand miles an hour, which is the rate of the diurnal motion of the earth at the equator; but the velocity of the earth’s motion round the sun is sixty-five times faster than this. “Jupiter, equal in weight to fourteen hundred earths, moves with a velocity of 29,000 miles an hour. The rate of Mercury is 107,000 miles an hour. The velocity of the comet of 1680 is estimated at 880,000 miles an hour.”⁵⁹⁵⁹   HARRIS’S Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 148. The annual motion of one of the (fixed!) stars, 61 Cygni, has been computed at one hundred and twenty millions of millions of miles. How mighty and transcending is the power displayed in these celestial masses and movements! It is certainly quite impossible that the conception of an all-powerful Being could have been more impressively set forth to the human mind. For whatever limit is at length reached in such contemplations does not arise from the exhaustion of evidence, but from the feebleness of our mental capacity to grasp the phenomena presented to it.

The vast periods of geology, and the immense forces that must have operated in the formation of the earth, are eminently calculated to give us the same impression of an eternal and omnipotent Being. The data with which the science of geology furnishes us, are not, indeed, so indisputable as those furnished by astronomy. For while there are some who estimate the geological cycles by millions of years, there are others who strive to bring them within much narrower bounds; while there are some who recognise the agency of elemental forces in the past career of the 117earth, of a magnitude of which we have now no experience, there are others who contend for a uniformity of those agencies with those presently existing. The character of the agencies employed, it is clear, must be estimated according to the different reckoning of the periods allotted to the work. On any special geological hypothesis, however, the data are sufficiently significant for our purpose. According to any admissible estimate, we find ourselves, in tracing back the progress of the earth’s formation, contemplating not a succession of days and years, but of ages and cycles of ages. The epochs that must have elapsed since the first great stones of the terrene structure were laid, and while terrace after terrace was added to it, carry us back into the night of time, far beyond the most fabulous computations of History. We ascend into the past by steps that weary our imagination to keep in view.

Again, the power concerned in the production of the vast effects which we see around us would seem to be equally indubitable, whether we assume them to have been brought about by suddenly violent or by gradual action. On any tenable supposition as to the mode of the elevation of the Alps and the Andes to their present heights, we must surely recognise in such phenomena the agency of a Power, before which we can only bow in dumb and lowly reverence. Here, surely, we behold the doing of the Almighty of Him before whom “the nations are as a drop of the bucket,” and who “taketh up the isles as a very little thing.”