LIMITATIONS.
To understand how our powers are limited let us take the following
illustrations. We see a horse of great fleetness, power, and
intelligence, with a barn before him all his life; and yet unable to
build one though he well knows it will protect him from the winds,
cold, and rain. We likewise see man with grass-seed, grains of sand and
oceans of water before him, and floods of air above; unable to make a
particle of any of these, no matter how much he needs soil to stand on,
water to quench his thirst, or air to breathe. His powers are limited;
he cannot live in ocean, sail the air, or even penetrate the earth to
any great depth. There are barriers against him, and although he has
invented wondrous ships, they do not yet take him to the North or South
Poles. Not that he does not know where the Poles are upon the earth’s
surface, but he seems thus far utterly unable to pass the surrounding
barriers. May not these very barriers be protecting some creatures that
otherwise might be exposed to injury or extermination? for we see how
living things are protected, oftentimes, by their diminutive size so
that animals of greater power and size cannot enter their homes to harm
them; or the weaker ones have a fleetness given to them whereby they
escape in time of danger.
We find man endowed with such reason and wisdom that occasionally
he discovers keys unlocking the mysteries of creation; these have
already opened to our view, the “ancient sunlight,” and developed
steam, electricity, and other of the natural forces for man’s benefit.
Suppose that George Washington had awakened after but a night’s sleep
and been told that King George of England desired to speak with him.
Would not the astonished General have asked: “What has become of the
Atlantic ocean that I am expected to talk with King George without
going to London to meet him!” That which would have inextricably
puzzled the Great Commander-in-Chief is to-day scarcely thought of
as mysterious, and we may believe that many like mysteries will yet
yield to man’s remarkable intelligence. On this great earth with its
270,000 millions of cubic miles, with its oceans of water and the
ocean of air surrounding it, and with the enormous amount of light
and heat falling upon it from the sun, we see life enough to lead us
to know assuredly there must be oceans of life of which we at present
know nothing. Take, for instance, any field or garden and extend it
however far you please—even to cover the whole earth if you will—and
with but a single grass-seed you can cover the whole earth with that
particular kind of grass;—assuming that it has the necessary light,
heat, and moisture to make it grow and increase. We know there is light
and heat in abundance, for enough falls upon the torrid zone alone to
give to the whole earth a moderate temperature, if equally diffused. We
know, further, that this single grass-seed is not the life but simply
the key that will unlock any quantities of life. What is true of the
seed is true also of every variety of vegetable and animal life. The
present ocean and earth are invisible to one born blind, and as little
do we see the oceans of life about us. Knowing as we must that such
life exists let us look for the fire-mist of _life_, a few particles
of which are familiar to us. We reason from the life we now see that
it can be extended; then let us extend it, as the fire-mist of our
planetary system, to Neptune’s bounds, reasoning in the same manner
from the least to the greatest. If we do not choose to use one cycle of
time we may take millions of them, as in the cooling fire-mist theory;
but we must not forget that the life we know is only on the crust of
earth and goes back but a few thousand years. If earth is the same
material as the sun and it takes, as we have stated, two million earths
to make one sun of a million miles diameter, with no limit to the
number of such suns; we can readily understand, from what we know of
life here, that there may exist other great and wonderful beings beyond
our highest apprehension.
We are limited in sight, for we cannot see but a few miles through
the clearest atmosphere. The mountains at no great distance take on
a cloud-like appearance, and resemble more nearly the surrounding
sky than the great heights of rock and earth they are found to be
when viewed near at hand. When we endeavor to look beneath us and
find that we cannot gaze for a single foot into the earth; and that
gold and diamonds might lie six inches underneath our feet and we not
be able to observe them, we understand how greatly our vision is
limited. Electric currents pass over the many wires strung throughout
our cities, and our sight is so limited that though we look long and
intensely we are not able to detect that electricity. The life in all
animals and vegetation is also imperceptible to us, for we only know
of its existence from the movements and appearances of bodies that
possess life, as compared with those that do not possess it. There
are many qualities of life—as love, goodness, virtue, hate, jealousy,
and revenge—that are as dissimilar as fire and water, or darkness and
light; and could we behold them they would assume shapes differing as
greatly as globes, squares, and triangles differ.
Still, what we most long to see are the spirits of our loved ones as
they depart from this mortal life and ascend into the presence of
their Creator; but look as long as we will, with all the faculties we
possess, we must at last fall back upon the assurance that our faith in
the Word of God lays hold of for our comfort and consolation. Though we
there learn that “Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him;”
that Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven; that Moses and Elias
were revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration; and that Jesus after his
resurrection was seen by His followers for forty days; yet the human
beings _we_ know and love must leave their bodies behind them as they
wing their flight to worlds beyond, and our sight is so limited that
we cannot perceive the souls even of our own life and being after they
have left their home in the flesh. In the same manner we should know
nothing of the depths of space only for the light that comes from stars
removed an inconceivable distance; for of this fact we are assured by
astronomers, and we should never dream that we looked a thousand miles
into the heavens only for those outside worlds that give to us, through
their magnitudes and distances, a faint conception of the Infinite
Greatness.
[Illustration: Decoration]