for many centuries, no planets were visible; but the astronomers said
within themselves, "There must surely be something or other between Mars
and Jupiter." They could not find any great planets; but as telescopes
became larger and more powerful, they observed that there was a great
number of ASTEROIDS or PLANETOIDS, as some term them. I do not know how
many there are, for they are like some of our brethren's families, they
are daily increasing. Some hundreds of them have already been
discovered; and by the aid of telescopic photography, we may expect to
hear of the finding of many more. The first asteroid was identified on
the first day of the present century, and was named Ceres. Many of them
have been called by female mythological names, I suppose because they
are the smaller planets, and it is considered gallant to give them
ladies' names. They appear to vary from about 20 to 200 miles in
diameter; and many have thought that they are the fragments of some
planet that once revolved between Mars and Jupiter, but that has been
blown up, and gone to pieces in a general wreck.
Those meteoric stones, which sometimes fall to the earth, but which much
more frequently, at certain seasons of the year, are seen shooting
across the midnight sky, may also be fragments of the aforesaid world
which has perished. At all events, since the fathers fell asleep, all
things have not continued as they were; there have been changes in the
starry world to let men know that other changes will yet come. These
blocks of meteoric matter are flying through space, and when they get
within the range of our atmosphere, there is an opposing medium, they
have to drive through it at an enormous rapidity, and so they become
burning hot, and thus they become visible. And, in like manner, I
believe that there are plenty of good men in the world who are invisible
till they get to be opposed, and being opposed, and having the love of
God driving them on with tremendous momentum, they become red-hot with
holy fervor, they overcome all opposition, and then they become visible
to the eye of mankind. For my part, I rather like to pass through an
opposing medium. I think that we all want to travel in that kind of
atmosphere just to give us the sacred friction that will fully develop
the powers with which we have been intrusted. If God has given us force,
it is not at all a bad thing for us to be put where there is opposition,
because we shall not be stopped by it, but shall by that very process be
made to shine all the brighter as lights in the world.
* * * * *
Beyond the space which is occupied by the asteroids is the magnificent
planet, JUPITER, the brightest star which we see, except Venus; and yet
he is very, very far away. His mean distance from the sun is about
475,000,000 miles; that is, more than five times as far off as we are.
Even here, we are so far away that we do not often see the sun; but
Jupiter is five times as far from the sun, and it takes him 4333 days,
or nearly twelve of our years, to go round the great luminary,
traveling at a speed of 27,180 miles an hour. The reason why Jupiter is
so bright is, partly, because of his great size, for he is nearly 90,000
miles in diameter, while the earth is less than 8,000, and it may be
partly because he is better constituted for reflecting, or else, at that
distance, his magnitude would not avail him. And brethren, if you and I
are put in difficult positions, where we seem to be unable to shine to
the glory of God, we must ask the Lord specially to constitute us so
that we can better reflect his brightness, and so produce as good an
effect as our brethren who are placed in more favorable positions.
Jupiter is attended by four moons.[3] These satellites were discovered
soon after the invention of the telescope; yet there were several
persons who would not believe in their existence, and one of our
excellent friends, the Jesuits, of course, was strongest in his
determination that he never would, by any process, be convinced of that
which others knew to be a fact. He was asked to look through a telescope
in order to see that it was really so; but he declined because he said
that, perhaps, if he did so, he would be obliged to believe it; and as
he had no desire to do so, he refused to look. Are there not some who
act thus toward the truths of revelation? Some time after, the Jesuit
fell under the anger of good Kepler, and being convinced that he was in
the wrong, he went to the astronomer and begged his pardon. Kepler told
him that he would forgive him, but he would have to inflict a penance
upon him. "What will it be?" he inquired. "Why," said Kepler, "you must
look through that telescope." That was the direst punishment the Jesuit
could possibly receive; for, when he looked through the instrument, he
was obliged to say that he did see what he had formerly denied, and he
was obliged to express his conviction of the truth of the astronomer's
teaching. So, sometimes, to make a man see the truth is a very severe
penalty to him. If he does not want to see it, it is a good thing to
compel him to look at it. There are a great many brethren, who are not
Jesuits, and who yet are not anxious to know the whole truth; but I hope
that you and I, brethren, will always desire to learn all that the Lord
has revealed in his Word.
[3] In 1892 a fifth satellite was discovered through the great
telescope at the Lick Observatory in California.
This was the argument of Sizzi, an astronomer of some note, who tried to
prove that Jupiter's moons could not exist. I wonder whether you can see
the flaw in it: "There are seven windows given to animals in the
domicile of the head, through which the air is admitted to the
tabernacle of the body, to enlighten, to warm, and to nourish it; which
windows are the principal parts of the microcosm, or little world, two
nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and one mouth. So, in the heavens, as in a
microcosm, or great world, there are two favorable stars, Jupiter and
Venus; two unpropitious, Mars and Saturn; two luminaries, the sun and
the moon; and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent, from which, and
from many other phenomena of nature, such as the seven metals, etc.,
which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets
is necessarily seven. Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the
naked eye, and therefore can exercise no influence over the earth, and
therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist. Besides, as well
the Jews and other ancient nations, as modern Europeans, have adopted
the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the
seven planets. Now, if we increase the number of the planets, this whole
system falls to the ground."
I think, brethren, that I have heard the same kind of argument advanced
many times with reference to spiritual matters; that is, an argument
from theory against fact; but facts will always overturn theories all
the world over, only that, sometimes, it takes a good while before the
facts can be absolutely proved.
It is a singular thing, and another instance of the power and wisdom of
God, that though the satellites of Jupiter are constantly being
eclipsed, as is natural enough from their rapid revolutions around him,
yet they are never all eclipsed at one time. One moon may be eclipsed,
and perhaps another, or even three out of the four; but there is always
one left shining; and, in like manner, God never takes away all the
comfort of his people at once, there is always some ray of light to
cheer them.
There is a great deal more to be learned from Jupiter; but having
introduced you to him, I will leave you to examine him for yourselves,
and to get all you can out of him.
* * * * *
Far, far beyond Jupiter is SATURN. That respectable planet has been very
much slandered, but I am happy to inform you that he does not deserve
such treatment. He is nearly 900,000,000 miles from the sun. I wonder
whether any brother here, with a large mind, has any idea of what a
million is; I do not suppose that he has, and I am sure that I have not.
It takes a vast deal of thinking to comprehend what a million means; but
to realize what is meant by a million miles is altogether beyond one's
mental grasp. A million pins would be something enormous; but a million
miles! And here we are talking of nine hundred millions of miles; well,
I give up all thought of understanding what that is so long as I am in
this finite state. Why, when you speak of nine hundred millions, you
might as well say nine hundred billions at once; for the one term is
almost as incomprehensible as the other; and yet, please to recollect
that this vast space is to our great God only a mere hand's-breadth
compared with the immeasurable universe that he has created.
I said that Saturn had been greatly slandered, and so he has. You know
that we have, in our English language, the word "saturnine," as a very
uncomplimentary description of certain individuals. When a man is
praised for being very hearty and genial, he is said to be jovial, in
allusion to Jove, or Jupiter, the brightly shining planet; but a person
of an opposite temperament is called saturnine, because it is supposed
that Saturn is a dull planet, dreadfully dreary, and that his influences
are malignant and baneful. If you have read some of the astrological
books which I have had the pleasure of studying, you have there been
told that, if you had been born under the influence of Saturn, you
might almost as well have been born under the influence of Satan, for it
will come to about the same thing in the end. He is supposed to be a
very slow sort of individual, his symbol is the hieroglyphic of lead;
but he is really a very light and buoyant personage. His diameter is
about nine times as great as that of the earth, and while in volume he
is equal to 746 worlds as large as ours, his weight is equal to only 92
such globes. The densities of the planets appear to diminish according
to their distance from the sun, not in regular proportion, but still
very largely so; and there seems to be no reason why those which are
most remote, and travel slowly, should be made so dense as those which
are nearer the central orb, and revolve more quickly around him.
This useful volume, from which I have already given you several
extracts, says: "Instead, therefore, of sinking like lead in the mighty
waters, he would float upon the liquid, if an ocean could be found
sufficiently capacious to receive him. John Goad, the well-known
astro-meteorologist, declared the planet not to be such a 'plumbeous,
blue-nosed fellow' as all antiquity had believed and the world still
supposed. But it was the work of others to prove it. For six thousand
years or so Saturn concealed his personal features, interesting family,
and strange appurtenances--the magnificent out-buildings of his
house--from the knowledge of mankind. But he was caught at last by a
little tube, pointed at him from a slope of the Apennines, the holder of
which, in invading his privacy, cared not to ask leave, and deemed it no
intrusion." When that "little tube" was turned upon him he was found to
be a most beautiful planet, one of the most varied and most marvelous of
all the planetary worlds.
Take that as an illustration of the falseness of slander, and of how
some persons are very much bemired and bespattered because people do not
know them. This planet, which was so despised, turned out to be a very
beautiful object indeed; and, instead of being very dull, and what the
word saturnine usually means, he is bright and glorious. Saturn also has
no less than eight satellites to attend him; and, in addition, he has
three magnificent rings, of which Tennyson has sung:
Still as, while Saturn whirls, his steadfast shade
Sleeps on his luminous rings.
Saturn has only about a hundredth part of the light from the sun as
compared with what we receive; and yet, I suppose, the atmosphere might
be so arranged that he might have as much solar light as we have; but
even if the atmosphere is of the same kind as ours, Saturn would still
have as much light as we have in an ordinary London fog. I am speaking,
of course, of the light from the sun; but then we cannot tell what
illuminating power the Lord may have put in the planet himself; and
beside that, he has his eight moons, and his three shining rings, which
have a brilliance that we cannot either imagine or describe. What must
it be to see a marvelous arch of light rising to a height of 37,570
miles above the planet, and having the enormous span of 170,000 miles!
If you were at the equator of Saturn, you would only see the rings as a
narrow band of light; but if you could journey toward the poles, you
would see above you a tremendous arch, blazing with light, like some of
the vast reflectors that you see hung up in large buildings where they
cannot get sufficient sunlight. The reflector helps to gather up the
rays of light, and throw them where they are needed; and I have no doubt
that these rings act like reflectors to Saturn. It must be a wonderful
world to live in if there are inhabitants there; they get compensations
which fully make up for their disadvantages in being so far away from
the sun. So is it in the spiritual world, what the Lord withholds in
one direction he makes up in another; and those who are far removed from
the means of grace and Christian privileges have an inward light and
joy, which others, with greater apparent advantages, might almost envy.
* * * * *
Journeying again in the heavens, far, far beyond Saturn, we come to
URANUS, or HERSCHEL, as it is sometimes called, after the astronomer who
discovered it in 1781. The mean distance of Uranus from the sun is
believed to be about 1,754,000,000 miles; I give you the figures, but
neither you nor I can have the slightest conception of the distance they
represent. To an observer standing on Uranus, the sun would probably
appear only as a faraway speck of light; yet the planet revolves around
the sun at about 15,000 miles an hour, and occupies about eighty-four of
our years in completing one journey. Uranus is said to be equal in
volume to seventy-three or seventy-four earths, and to be attended by
four moons. I do not know much about Uranus, therefore I do not intend
to say much about him.
That may serve as an illustration of the lesson that a man had better
say as little as possible concerning anything of which he knows only a
little; and that is a lesson which many people need to learn. For
instance, there are probably more works on the Book of Revelation than
upon any other part of the Scriptures, and, with the exception of just a
few, they are not worth the paper on which they are printed. Then, next
to the Book of Revelation, in this respect, is the Book of Daniel; and
because it is so difficult to explain, many men have written upon it,
but as a rule the result of their writing has been that they have only
confuted and contradicted one another. Let us, brethren, preach what we
know, and say nothing of that of which we are ignorant.
* * * * *
We have gone a long way, in imagination, in traveling to the planet
Uranus; but we have not yet completed our afternoon's journey. It was
observed by certain astronomers that the orbit of Uranus sometimes
deviated from the course they had marked in their chart of the heavens;
and this convinced them that there was another planetary body, not then
discovered, which was exerting an unseen but powerful influence upon
Uranus.
This fact, that these huge worlds, with so many millions of miles of
space between them, do retard or accelerate one another's movements, is
to me a beautiful illustration of the influence that you and I have upon
our fellowmen. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we either impede a
man's progress in the path that leads to God, or else we quicken his
march along the heavenward way. "None of us liveth to himself."
The astronomers came to the conclusion that there must be another
planet, previously unknown to them, that was disturbing the motion of
Uranus. Unknown to each other, an Englishman, Mr. Adams, of Cambridge,
and a Frenchman, M. Leverrier, set to work to find out the position in
which they expected the heavenly body to be discovered, and their
calculations brought them to almost identical results. When the
telescopes were pointed to that part of the heavens where the
mathematical astronomers believed the planet would be found, it was at
once discovered, shining with a pale and yellow light, and we now know
it by the name of NEPTUNE.
The volume before me thus speaks of the two methods of finding a planet,
the one worker using the most powerful telescope, and the other making
mathematical calculations: "To detect a planet by the eye, or to track
it to its place by the mind, are acts as incommensurable as those of
muscular and intellectual power. Recumbent on his easy-chair, the
practical astronomer has but to look through the cleft in his revolving
cupola in order to trace the pilgrim star in its course; or, by the
application of magnifying power, to expand its tiny disk, and thus
transfer it from among its sidereal companions to the planetary domains.
The physical astronomer, on the contrary, has no such auxiliaries: he
calculates at noon, when the stars disappear under a meridian sun; he
computes at midnight, when clouds and darkness shroud the heavens; and
from within that cerebral dome which has no opening heavenward, and no
instrument but the eye of reason, he sees in the disturbing agencies of
an unseen planet, upon a planet by him equally unseen, the existence of
the disturbing agent, and from the nature and amount of its action he
computes its magnitude and indicates its place."
What a grand thing is reason! Far above the mere senses, and then faith
is high above reason; only, in the case of the mathematical astronomer
of whom we are thinking, reason was a kind of faith. He argued: "God's
laws are so-and-so and so-and-so. This planet Uranus is being disturbed,
some other planet must have disturbed it, so I will search and find out
where he is;" and when his intricate calculations were completed, he put
his finger on Neptune as readily as a detective lays his hand on a
burglar, and a great deal sooner; indeed, it seems to me that it is
often easier to find a star than to catch a thief.
Neptune had long been shining before he was discovered and named; and
you and I, brethren, may remain unknown for years, and possibly the
world may never discover us; but I trust that our influence, like that
of Neptune, will be felt and recognized, whether we are seen of men or
only shine in solitary splendor to the glory of God.
* * * * *
Well, we have traveled in thought as far as Neptune, which is about
2,748,000,000 miles from the sun; and, standing there, we look over into
space, and there are myriads, and myriads, and myriads of miles in which
there appear to be no more planets belonging to the solar system. There
may be others that have not been discovered yet; but, as far as we know,
beyond Neptune there is a great gulf fixed.
There are, however, what I may call "leapers" in the system, which,
without the use of a pole, are able to cross this gulf; they are THE
COMETS. These comets are, as a rule, so thin--a mere filmy mass of
vapor--that when they come flashing into our system, and rushing out
again, as they do, they never disturb the motion of a planet. And there
are some terrestrial comets about, that I know, that go to various
towns, and blaze away for a time; but they have no power to disturb the
planets revolving there in their regular course. The power of a man does
not consist in rushing to and fro, like a comet, but in steadily shining
year after year, like a fixed star. The astronomer Halley says: "If you
were to condense a comet down to the thickness of the ordinary
atmosphere, it would not fill a square inch of space." So thin is a
comet that you might look through five thousand miles of it, and see
just as easily as if it were not there. It is well to be transparent,
brethren; but I hope you will be more substantial than most of the
comets of which we have heard.
Comets come with great regularity, though they seem to be very
irregular. Halley prophesied that the comet of 1682, of which little had
been previously known, would return at regular intervals of about
seventy-five years. He knew that he would not live to see its
reappearance; but he expressed the hope that when it did return his
prophecy might be remembered. Various astronomers were looking out for
it, and they hoped it might arrive at the time foretold, because,
otherwise, ignorant people would not believe in astronomy. But the comet
came back all right; so their minds were set at rest, and Halley's
prediction was verified.
Among the stories concerning comet-watching, there is one that contains
an illustration and a lesson also. "Messier, who had acquired the name
of 'the comet-hunter,' from the number he discovered, was particularly
anxious upon the occasion. Of great simplicity of character, his zeal
after comets was often displayed in the oddest manner. While attending
the death-bed of his wife, and necessarily absent from his observatory,
the discovery of one was snatched from him by Montaigne de Limoges. This
was a grievous blow. A visitor began to offer him consolation on account
of his recent bereavement, when Messier, thinking only of the comet,
answered, 'I had discovered twelve; alas, to be robbed of the thirteenth
by that Montaigne!' But instantly recollecting himself, he exclaimed,
'Ah! cette pauvre femme!' and went on deploring wife and comet
together." He evidently lived so much in the heavens that he forgot his
wife; and if science can sometimes carry a man away from all the trials
of this mortal life, surely our heavenly life ought to lift us up above
all the distractions and cares that afflict us.
The return of a comet is frequently announced with great certainty. This
paragraph appeared in a newspaper: "On the whole, it may be considered
as tolerably certain that the comet will become visible in every part of
Europe about the latter end of August, or the beginning of September
next. It will most probably be distinguishable by the naked eye, like a
star of the first magnitude, but with a duller light than that of a
planet, and surrounded with a pale nebulosity, which will slightly
impair its splendor. On the night of the 7th of October the comet will
approach the well-known constellation of the Great Bear; and between
that and the 11th it will pass directly through the seven conspicuous
stars of that constellation. Toward the close of November the comet will
plunge among the rays of the sun and disappear, and not issue from them,
on the other side, until the end of December. This prospectus of the
movements of a body, invisible at the time, millions of miles away, is
nearly as definite as the early advertisements of coaching between
London and Edinburgh. Let us now place the observations of the eye
alongside the anticipations of science, and we shall find that science
has proved almost absolutely correct."
Just think of the calculations, gentlemen, that were necessary; for,
though a comet does not interfere with the course of a planet, a planet
interferes very considerably with the course of a comet; so that, in
their calculations, the astronomers had to recollect the track in which
the comet would have to travel. Thinking of him as a way-worn traveler,
we remember that he will have to go by Neptune's bright abode, and
Neptune will be sure to give him a cup of tea; then he will journey on
as far as Uranus, and put up for the night there; in the morning he will
pay an early visit to Saturn, and he will stay there for breakfast; he
will dine with Jupiter; by and by he will reach Mars, and there will be
sure to be a row there; and he will be glad when he gets to Venus, and,
of course, he will be detained by her charms. You will, therefore, very
readily see, gentlemen, that the calculations as to the return of a
comet are extremely difficult, and yet the astronomers do estimate the
time to a nicety. This science is a very marvelous one, not only for
what it reveals, but for the talent which it brings out, and the lessons
it continually teaches us about the wonderful works of our great Father.