Finally, my Friends, I believe there is no contemplation better adapted
to awaken devout ideas than that of the heavenly bodies,--no branch of
natural science which bears clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of
God than that to which you this day consecrate a temple. The heart of
the ancient world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true nature
and motions of the heavenly orbs, was religiously impressed by their
survey. There is a passage in one of those admirable philosophical
treatises of Cicero composed in the decline of life, as a solace under
domestic bereavement and patriotic concern at the impending convulsions
of the state, in which, quoting from some lost work of Aristotle, he
treats the topic in a manner which almost puts to shame the teachings of
Christian wisdom.
"Præclare ergo Aristoteles, 'Si essent,' inquit, 'qui sub terra semper
habitavissent, bonis et illustribus domiciliis quæ essent ornata signis
atque picturis, instructaque rebus iis omnibus quibus abundant ii qui
beati putantur, nec tamen exissent unquam supra terram; accepissent
autem fama et auditione, esse quoddam numen et vim Deorum,--deinde
aliquo tempore patefactis terræ faucibus ex illis abditis sedibus
evadere in hæc loca quæ nos incolimus, atque exire potuissent; cum
repente terram et maria coelumque, vidissent; nubium magnitudinem
ventorumque vim, cognovissent; aspexissentque solem, ejusque tum
magnitudinem, pulchritudinemque; tum etiam efficientiam cognovissent,
quod is diem efficeret, toto coelo luce diffusa; cum autem terras nox
opacasset, tum coelum totum cernerent astris distinctum et ornatum,
lunæque luminum varietatem tum crescentis tum senescentis, corumque
omnium ortus et occasus atque in æternitate ratos immutabilesque
cursus;--hæc cum viderent, profecto et esse Deos, et hæc tanta opera
Deorum esse, arbitrarentur."[A]
There is much by day to engage the attention of the Observatory; the
sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disc (to
us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his
luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior
planets, the mysteries of the spectrum;--all phenomena of vast
importance and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time; he
goes to his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A
dark pall spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects,
hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men disappear;
but the curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There
they shine and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of
Newton and Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus;
yes, as they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but
the glorious heavens remain unchanged. The plow passes over the site
of mighty cities,--the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the
languages they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them
are shining for us; the same eclipses run their steady cycle; the same
equinoxes call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman
to the harvest; the sun pauses at either tropic as he did when his
course began; and sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star and
constellation and galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom,
and the love, which placed them in the heavens and uphold them there.
[Footnote A: "Nobly does Aristotle observe, that if there were beings
who had always lived under ground, in convenient, nay, in magnificent
dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and every thing which
belongs to prosperous life, but who had never come above ground; who had
heard, however, by fame and report, of the being and power of the gods;
if, at a certain time, the portals of the earth being thrown open,
they had been able to emerge from those hidden abodes to the regions
inhabited by us; when suddenly they had seen the earth, the sea, and
the sky; had perceived the vastness of the clouds and the force of the
winds; had contemplated the sun, his magnitude and his beauty, and
still more his effectual power, that it is he who makes the day, by
the diffusion of his light through the whole sky; and, when night had
darkened the earth, should then behold the whole heavens studded and
adorned with stars, and the various lights of the waxing and waning
moon, the risings and the settings of all these heavenly bodies, and the
courses fixed and immutable in all eternity; when, I say, they should
see these things, truly they would believe that there were gods, and
these so great things are their works."--Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_ lib.
ii., § 30.]