Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Part 26

[261] Annual of Scientific Discovery. 1856.

[262] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 196. Nichol's Solar System, 184.

[263] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 288.

[264] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 250.

[265] Lyell's Principles of Geology, 465.

[266] Cosmos, Vol. I. p. 250.

[267] Cosmos, Vol. I. pp. 198, 216.

[268] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 139.

[269] Nichol's Solar System, 188. Connection of Physical Sciences, 363.

[270] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 827.

[271] Cosmos, Vol. VIII. p. 210.

[272] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 832.

[273] Mitch.e.l.l's Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 294.

[274] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 253.

[275] Astronomical Observations, 351.

[276] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 830.

[277] Astronomical Observations, 351.

[278] Cosmos, Vol. III. pp. 222-232.

[279] Cosmos, Vol. III. p. 246.

[280] Solar System, 190.

[281] Ephesians, chap. iv. 18. 2 Corinthians, chap. iv. 4.

[282] Matthew, chap. xxiv. 29. John, chap. viii. 12. Jeremiah, chap.

xiii. 15. Matthew, chap. xxii. 13 and chap. xxv. 30.

CHAPTER XII.

TELESCOPIC VIEWS OF SCRIPTURE.

No kind of knowledge is more useful to man than the knowledge of his own ignorance; and no instrument has done more to give him such knowledge than the telescope. Faith is the believing of facts we do not know, upon the word of one who does. If any one knows everything, or thinks he does, he can have no faith. A deep conviction of our own ignorance is, therefore, indispensable to faith. The telescope gives us this conviction in two ways. It shows us that we see a great many things we do not perceive, tells us the size and the distances of those little sparks that adorn the sky, and leads us to reason out their true relations to our earth. Then it tells us, that what we see is little of what is to be seen; that our knowledge is but a drop from the great ocean, a rush-light sparkling in the vast darkness of the unknown. It tells us, that we do not see right, and that we do not see far; and that there may be things, both in heaven and earth, not dreamed of in our philosophy. Further, it confirms the Bible testimony concerning the facts of its own province, by removing all improbability from some of its most wonderful narratives, attesting the accuracy of its language, and confirming, by some of its most recent discoveries the truth of its statements. Our s.p.a.ce will only allow us to select five ill.u.s.trations of the tendency of faith in the telescope, to produce faith in the Bible.

1. One of the latest astronomical discoveries throws light upon one of the most ancient scientific allusions of the Bible, and one which has perplexed both commentators and geologists; _that which hints at the second causes of the deluge_. Not that it is at all needful for us to be able to tell where G.o.d Almighty procured the water to drown the unG.o.dly sinners of the old world, before we believe his word that he did so; unless, indeed, somebody has explored the universe, and knows that there is not water enough in it for that purpose, or that it is so far away that he could not fetch it; for, as to the fact itself, geology a.s.sures us that all the dry land on earth has been drowned, not only once, but many times. It is not the province of the commentator, but of the geologist, to account for the phenomenon.

Several solutions of the difficulty of finding water enough for the purpose have been proposed. One of these supposes that some of the internal caverns of the earth are filled with water, which, when heated by neighboring volcanic fires, would expand one twenty-third of its bulk, and flow out, and raise the ocean. When the volcanic fire was burnt out, and the water cooled, it would of course contract to its former dimensions, and the ocean recede. These caverns they suppose to be meant by "the fountains of the great deep," in Genesis vii. 11.

But the Bible describes another, and plainly a very important source of the waters of the deluge, in the rain which fell for forty days and forty nights. At present, all the water in our atmosphere comes from the sea, by evaporation; and the quant.i.ty is too insignificant to cover the globe to any considerable depth. Divines and philosophers were perplexed to give any adequate explanation of this language, and considered it simply as Noah's description of the appearance of things as viewed from the ark, rather than an accurate explanation of the actual causes of the deluge. Now, it is certainly true, that the Bible does describe things as they appear to men. It is, however, beginning to be discovered, that these popular appearances are closely connected with philosophical reality. Our purblind astronomy and prattling geology may be as inadequate to expound the mysteries of the Bible philosophy as was the incoherent science of Strabo and Ptolemy. The experience of another planet, now transacting before our eyes, admonishes us not to limit the resources of Omnipotence by our narrow experience, or to suppose that our young science has catalogued all the weapons in the a.r.s.enal of the Almighty.

The planet Saturn is surrounded by a revolving belt, consisting of several distinct rings, containing an area a hundred and forty-six times greater than the surface of our globe, with a thickness of a hundred miles. From mechanical considerations it had been proved, that these rings could not be of a uniform thickness all around, else when a majority of his seven moons were on the same side, the attraction would draw them in upon him, on the opposite side; and once attracted to his surface, they could never get loose again, if they were solid.[283] It was next ascertained that the motions of the moons and of the rings were such, that if the inequality was always in the same place, the same result must follow; so that the ring must be capable of changing its thickness, according to circ.u.mstances. It must be either composed of an immense number of small solid bodies, capable of s.h.i.+fting freely about among themselves, or else be fluid. Finally, it has been demonstrated that this last is the fact; that the density of this celestial ocean is nearly that of water; and that the inner portion, at least, is so transparent, that the planet has been seen through it.[284] "The ring of Saturn is, then, a stream or streams of fluid, rather denser than water, flowing about the primary."[285] The extraordinary fact, which shows us how G.o.d can deluge a planet when he pleases, I give not in the words of a divine, but of a philosopher, whose thoughtless ill.u.s.tration of Scripture is all the more valuable, that it is evidently unintentional.

"M. Otto Struve, Mr. Bond, and Sir David Brewster, are agreed that Saturn's third ring is fluid, that this is not of very recent formation, and that it is not subject to rapid change. And they have come to the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring has, since the day of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body of Saturn, and that we may expect, sooner or later--perhaps in some dozen years--to see the rings united with the body of the planet. _With this deluge impending, Saturn would scarcely be a very eligible residence for men, whatever it might be for dolphins._"[286]

Knowing, as we most certainly do, that the fluid envelopes of our own planet were once exceedingly different from the present,[287] here is a possibility quite sufficient to stop the mouth of the scoffer. Let him show that G.o.d did not, or prove that he could not, suspend a similar series of oceans over the earth, or cease to p.r.o.nounce a universal deluge impossible.

2. That sublime ode, in which Deborah describes _the stars in their courses as fighting against Sisera_[288] has been rescued from the grasp of modern scoffers, by the progress of astronomy. It has been alleged as lending its support to the delusions of judicial astrology; by one cla.s.s desiring to damage the Bible as a teacher of superst.i.tion, and by another to help their trade. The Bible reader will doubtless be greatly surprised to hear it a.s.serted, that the Bible lends its sanction to this antiquated, and, as he thinks, exploded superst.i.tion. He knows how expressly the Bible forbids G.o.d's people to have anything to do with it, or with its heathenish professors. "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them."[289] And they will be still more surprised to learn, that those who object against the Bible, that it ascribes a controlling influence to the stars, are firm believers in Reichenbach's discovery of _odyle_; an influence from the heavenly bodies so spiritual and powerful, that they imagine it able to govern the world, instead of G.o.d Almighty.[290]

The pa.s.sage thus variously abused is a description, in highly poetic strains, of the battle between the troops of Israel and those of Sisera; of the defeat of the latter, and of an earthquake and tempest, which completed the destruction of his exhausted troops. The glory of the victory is wholly ascribed to the Lord G.o.d of Israel; while the rain, the thunder, lightning, swollen river, and "the stars in their courses,"

are all described, in their subordinate places, as only his instruments--the weapons of his a.r.s.enal.

"Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, The clouds also dropped down water; The mountains also melted from before the Lord, Even that Sinai, from before the Lord G.o.d of Israel."

Then, after describing the battle, she alludes to the celestial artillery, and to the effects of the storm in swelling the river, and sweeping away the fugitives who had sought the fords:

"They fought from heaven; The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; The river Kishon swept them away; That ancient river, the river Kishon."[291]

After describing some further particulars the hymn concludes with an allusion to the clearing away of the tempest and the appearance of the unclouded sun over the field of victory:

"So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; But let them that love thee be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might."

Where is there the least allusion here to any controlling influence of the stars? You might just as well say, "The Bible ascribes a controlling influence over the destinies of men, to the river Kishon;" for they are both spoken of, in the same language, as instruments in G.o.d's hand for the destruction of his enemies.

But it is objected, "Even by this explanation you have the Bible representing the stars as causing the rain." Not so fast. If a man were very ignorant, and had never heard of anything falling from the sky but rain, he might think so. And if the Bible did attribute to the stars some such influence over the vapors of the atmosphere, as experience shows the moon to possess over the ocean, are you able to demonstrate its absurdity?

Deborah, however, when she sang of the stars _in their courses_ fighting against Sisera, was describing a phenomenon very different from a fall of rain--was, in fact, describing a fall of aerolites upon the army of Sisera. Mult.i.tudes of stones have fallen from the sky, and not less than five hundred such falls are recorded.

"On September 1, 1814, a few minutes before midday, while the sky was perfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department of the Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, and finally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry, afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that of a large building falling down. Stones were immediately after precipitated to the ground, some of which weighed eighteen pounds, and sunk into a compact soil, to the depth of eight or nine inches; and one of them rebounded three or four feet from the ground."

"A great shower of stones fell at Barbatan, near Roquefort, in the vicinity of Bordeaux, on July 24, 1790. A ma.s.s fifteen inches in diameter penetrated a hut and killed a herdsman and bullock. Some of the stones weighed twenty-five pounds, and others thirty pounds."

"In July, 1810, a large ball of fire fell from the clouds, at Shahabad, which burned five villages, destroyed the crops, and killed several men and women."[292]

Astronomers are perfectly agreed as to the character of these ma.s.ses, and the source whence they come. "It appears from recent astronomical observations that the sun numbers among his attendants not only planets, asteroids, and comets, but also immense mult.i.tudes of meteoric stones, and shooting stars."[293] aerolites are, then, really stars. They are composed of materials similar to those of our earth; the only other star whose materials we can compare with them. They have a proper motion around the sun, in orbits distinct from that of the earth. They are capable of emitting the most brilliant light, in favorable circ.u.mstances. Some of them are as large as the asteroids. One, of 600,000 tons weight, pa.s.sed within twenty-five miles of the earth, at the rate of twenty miles a second. A fragment of it reached the earth.[294] "That aerolites were called _stars_ by the ancients is indisputable. Indeed, Anaxagoras considered the stars to be only stony ma.s.ses, torn from the earth by the violence of rotation. Democritus tells us, that invisible dark ma.s.ses of stone move with the visible stars, and remain on that account unknown, but sometimes fall upon the earth, and are extinguished, as happened with the stony star which fell near Aegos Potamos."[295]

When Deborah, therefore, describes the _stars in their courses_ as fighting against Sisera, it is an utterly unfounded a.s.sumption to suppose that she has any allusion to the baseless fancies of an astrology everywhere condemned by the religion she professed, when a simple and natural explanation is afforded by the fact, that stars do fall from the heavens to the earth, and _that they do so in their courses_, and just by reason of their orbital motion; and that the ancients both knew the fact, and gave the right name to those bodies.

Let no reasonable man delude himself with the notion that G.o.d has no weapons more formidable than the dotings of astrology, till he has taken a view of the a.r.s.enals of G.o.d's artillery, which he has treasured up against the day of battle and of war.

Here it may be well to notice the ill.u.s.tration which the remarkable showers of meteors, particularly those of November, 1833, shed upon several much ridiculed texts of Scripture. Scientific observation has fully confirmed and ill.u.s.trated the scientific accuracy of the Bible in such expressions as, "the stars shall fall from heaven;" "there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp;" "and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Whatever political or ecclesiastical events these symbols may signify, there can be no question, now, that the astronomical phenomenon used to prefigure them is correctly described in the Bible. Most of my readers have seen some of these remarkable exhibitions; but for the sake of those who have not, I give a brief account of one. "By much the most splendid meteoric shower on record, began at nine o'clock, on the evening of the twelfth of November, 1833, and lasted till sunrise next morning. It extended from Niagara and the northern lakes of America, to the south of Jamaica, and from 61 of longitude, in the Atlantic, to 100 of longitude in Central Mexico. Shooting stars and meteors of the apparent size of Jupiter, Venus, and even the full moon, darted in myriads toward the horizon, _as if every star in the heavens had darted from their spheres_." They are described as having been as frequent as the flakes of snow in a snow-storm, and to have been seen with equal brilliancy over the greater part of the continent of North America.[296]