My^^ 




Class l5i^2^-5Ji 
Book ■ ^ c) , 



PRESENTS 



A 

SERIES OF DISCOURSES 



ON 



THE CHEISTIAN EEYELATION. 



VIEWED IN CONNECTION 



WITH 



THE MODERN ASTEONOMY, 



BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. 

MINISTER OF THE TRON CHURCH, GLASGOW. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY^ 

150 NASSAU-STREET. NEW YORK. 






One hundred dollars was paid by John W. Ham- 
ersley, Esq. of New York, towards perpetuating this 
volume. 



^- 






CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE I. 

A SKETCH OF THE MODEHN ASTHONOMY. 

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon 
and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou 
art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 
Psa. 8 : 3, 4 13 

DISCOURSE 11. 

THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

"And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth 
nothing yet as he ought to know." 1 Cor. 8:2. . • 50 

DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 

*' Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who 
humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in 
the earth!" Psa. 113:5, 6. ...... 86 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE KNOWLEDaE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY IN 
THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 

"Which things the angels desire to look into." 1 Pet. 1 : 12. 117 



4 CONTENTS. 

DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE 
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 

*'I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sin- 
ner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, 
which need no repentance." Luke 15 : 7. • . 150 

DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OYER MAN, 
AMONG- THE HiaHER ORDERS OF INTELLIG-ENCE. 

"And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of 
them openly, triumphing over them in it." Col. 2 : 15. 178 

DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE 
AND SENSIBILITY IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 

"And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath 
a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they 
hear thy words, but they do them not." Ezek. 33 : 32. . . 204 

Scriptural Illustrations, . . . . . • . 245 



PREFACE. 



The astronomical, objection against the 
truth of the gospel does not occupy a very 
prominent place in any of our treatises of 
infidelity. It is often, however, met with in 
conversation; and we have known it to he 
the cause of serious perplexity and alarm in 
minds anxious for the solid establishment of 
their religious faith. 

There is an imposing splendor in the sci- 
ence of astronomy ; and it is not to be won- 
dered at, if the light it throws, or appears to 
throw, over other tracks of speculation than 
those which are properly its own, should at 
times dazzle and mislead an inquirer. On 
this account, we think it were a service to 
what we deem a true and a righteous cause, 
could we succeed in dissipating this illusion ; 
and in stripping infidelity of those pretensions 



6 PREFACE. 

to enlargement, and to a certain air of phil- 
osophical greatness, by which it has often 
become so destructively allming to the young 
and the ardent and the ambitious. 

In my first discourse I have attempted a 
sketch of the modern astronomy, nor have I 
wished to throw any disguise over that com- 
parative littleness which belongs to our plan- 
et, and which gives to the argument of Free- 
thinkers all its plausibility. 

This argument involves in it an assertion 
and an inference. The assertion is, that 
Christianity is a religion which professes to 
be designed for the single benefit of our 
world; and the inference is, that God cannot 
be the author of this religion, for he would 
not lavish on so insignificant a field such 
peculiar and such distinguishing attentions, 
as are ascribed to him in the Old and Nev/ 
Testament. 

Christianity makes lio such profession. 
That it is designed for the single benefit of 
our world, is altogether a presumption of the 
infidel himself; and feeling that this is not 
the only example of temerity which can be 



PEEFACE. 7 

charged on the enemies of our faith, I have 
allotted my second discom^se to the attempt 
of demonstrating the utter repugnance of such 
a spirit with the cautious and enlightened 
philosophy of modern times. 

In the course of this sermon I have offered 
a tribute of acknowledgment to the theology 
of Sir Isaac Newton; and in such terms as, 
if not further explained, may be liable to 
misconstruction. The grand circumstance of 
applause in the character of this great man 
is, that unseduced by all the magnificence of 
his own discoveries, he had a solidity of mind 
which could resist their fascination, and keep 
him in steady attachment to that book whose 
general evidences stamped upon it the im- 
press of a real communication from heaven. 
This was the sole attribute of his theology 
which I had in my eye when I presumed to 
eulogize it. I do not think that, amid the 
distraction and the engrossment of his other 
pursuits, he has at all times succeeded in his 
interpretation of the book ; else he would 
never, in my apprehension, have abetted the 
leading doctrine of a sect or a system which 



8 PREFACE. 

has now nearly dwindled away from public 
observation. 

In my third discourse I am silent as to 
the assertion and attempt to combat the infer- 
ence that is founded on it. I insist, that 
upon all the analogies of nature and of prov- 
idence, we can lay no limit on the conde- 
scension of G-od, or on the multiplicity of his 
regards even to the very humblest depart- 
ments of creation; and that it is not for us, 
who see the evidences of divine wisdom and 
care spread in such exhaustless profusion 
around us, to say that the Deity would not 
lavish all the wealth of his wondrous attri- 
butes on the salvation even of our solitary 
species. 

At this point of the argument I trust that 
the intelligent reader may be enabled to per- 
ceive, in the adversaries of the gospel, a two- 
fold dereliction from the maxims of the Baco- 
nian philosophy: that, in the first instance, 
the assertion which forms the groundwork of 
their argument, is gratuitously fetched out of 
an unknown region where they are utterly 
abandoned by the light of experience; and 



PREFACE. ^ 

that, in the second instance, the inference they 
urge from it, is in the face of manifold and 
undeniable truths, all lying within the safe 
and accessible field of human observation. 

In my subsequent discourses, I proceed to 
the informations of the record. The infidel 
objection drawn from astronomy may be 
considered as by this time disposed of, and if 
we have succeeded in clearing it away, so as 
to deliver the Christian testimony from all 
discredit upon this ground, then may we sub- 
mit, on the strength of other evidences, to be 
guided by its information. We shall thus 
learn that Christianity has a far more exten- 
sive bearing on the other orders of creation, 
than the infidel is disposed to allow; and 
whether he will own the authority of this 
information or not, he will at least be forced 
to admit that the subject matter of the Bible 
itself is not chargeable with that objection 
which he has attempted to fasten upon it. 

Thus, had my only object been the refu- 
tation of the infidel argument, 1 might have 
spared the last discourses of the volume alto- 
gether. But the tracks of scriptural informa- 



10 PHEFACE. 

tion to which they directed me, I considered 
as worthy of prosecution on their own ac- 
count; and I do think that much may be 
gathered from these less observed portions of 
the field of revelation, to cheer and to elevate 
and to guide the believer. 

But in the management of such a discus- 
sion as this, though for a great degree of this 
effect it would require to be conducted in a 
far higher style than I am able to sustain, 
the taste of the human mind may be regaled, 
and its understanding put into a state of the 
most agreeable exercise. Now, this is quite 
distinct from the conscience being made to 
feel the force of a personal application; nor 
could I either bring this argument to its close 
in the pulpit, or offer it to the general notice 
of the world, without adverting in the last 
discourse to a delusion which, I fear, is carry- 
ing forward thousands, and tens of thousands, 
to an undone eternity. 

I have closed the volume with an appen- 
dix of scriptural authorities. I found that I 
could not easily interweave them in the tex- 
ture of the work, and have therefore thought 



PEEFACE. 11 

fit to present them in a separate form. I 
look for a twofold benefit from this exhibition : 
first, on those more general readers who are 
ignorant of the Scriptures, and of the richness 
and variety which abound in them ; and 
secondly, on those narrow and intolerant pro- 
fessors who take an alarm at the very sound 
and semblance of philosophy, and feel as 
if there was an utter irreconcilable antip- 
athy between its lessons on the one hand, 
and the soundness and piety of the Bible on 
the other. It were well, I conceive, for our 
cause, that the latter could become a little 
more indulgent on this subject; that they 
gave up a portion of those ancient and hered- 
itary prepossessions, which go so far to cramp 
and to enthral them ; that they would suffer 
theology to take that wide range of argument 
and of illustration which belongs to her, and 
that less sensitively jealous of any desecration 
being brought upon the Sabbath or the pulpit, 
they would suffer her freely to announce all 
those truths which either serve to protect 
Christianity from the contempt of science, or 
to protect the teachers of Christianity from 



12 PUEFACE. 

those invasions which are practised both on 
the sacredness of the office, and on the solitude 
of its devotional and intellectual labors. 

I shall only add, for the information of 
readers at a distance, that these discourses 
were chiefly delivered on the occasion of the 
week-day sermon that is preached in rotation 
by the ministers of Glasgow. 



DISCOURSES 



ON 



THE CHEISTIAN EEVELATION 



DISCOURSE I. 

A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 

" When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the 
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained : What is man, that 
thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest 
him?" Psalm 8; 3, 4. 

In the reasonings of the apostle Paul, we 
cannot fail to observe how studiously he ac- 
commodates his arguments to the pursuits, or 
principles, or prejudices of the people whom 
he was addressing. He often made a favorite 
opinion of their own the starting point of his 
explanation, and educing a dexterous but 
irresistible train of argument from some prin- 
ciple upon which each of the parties had a 
common understanding, did he force them out 
of all their opposition by a weapon of their 



14 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

own choosing; nor did he scruple to avail 
himself of a Jewish peculiarity, or a heathen 
superstition, or a quotation from Greek poetry, 
by which he might gain the attention of those 
whom he labored to convince, and by the 
skilful application of which he might ^^shut 
them up unto the faith." 

Now, w^hen Paul was thus addressing one 
class of an assembly, or congregation, another 
class might, for the time, have been shut out 
of all direct benefit and application from his 
arguments. When he wrote an epistle to a 
mixed assembly of Christianized Jews and 
G-entiles, he had often to direct such a pro- 
cess of argument to the former, as the latter 
would neither require nor comprehend. Now, 
what should have been the conduct of the 
Gentiles at the reading of that part of the 
epistle which bore an almost exclusive refer- 
ence to the Jews ? Should it be impatience 
at the hearing of something for which they 
had no relish or understanding? Should it 
be a fretful disappointment, because every 
thing that was said was not said for their 
edification? Should it be angry discontent 
with the apostle, because, leaving them in 
the dark, he had brought forward nothing for 



MODEUN ASTHONOMY. 15 

them, through the whole extent of so many- 
successive chapters ? Some of them may have 
felt in this way; but surely it would have 
been vastly more Christian to have sat with 
meek and unfeigned patience, and to have 
rejoiced that the great apostle had undertaken 
the management of those obstinate prejudices 
which kept back so many human beings from 
the participation of the gospel. And should 
Paul have had reason to rejoice, that by the 
success of his arguments he had reconciled 
one or any number of Jews to Christianity, 
then it was the part of these Gentiles, though 
receiving no direct or personal benefit from 
the arguments, to have blessed God, and 
rejoiced along with him. 

Conceive that Paul were at this moment 
alive, and zealously engaged in the work of 
pressing the Christian religion on the accept- 
ance of the various classes of society. Should 
he not still have acted on the principle of 
being all things to all men? Should he not 
have accommodated his discussion to the pre- 
vailing taste and literature and philosophy of 
the times? Should he not have closed with 
the people whom he was addressing, on some 
favorite principle of their own ; and, in the 



16 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

prosecution of this principle, might he not 
have got completely beyond the comprehen- 
sion of a numerous class of zealous, humble, 
and devoted Christians ? Now, the question 
is not, how these would conduct themselves 
in such circumstances ; but, how should they 
do it? Would it be right in them to sit 
with impatience, because the argument of 
the apostle contained in it nothing in the 
way of comfort or edification to themselves ? 
Should not the benevolence of the gospel give 
a different direction to their feelings ? And, 
instead of that narrow, exclusive, and monop- 
olizing spirit, which I fear is too character- 
istic of the more declared professors of the 
truth as it is in Jesus, ought they not to be 
patient, and to rejoice, when to philosophers, 
and to men of literary accomplishment, and 
to those who have the direction of the public 
taste among the upper walks of society, such 
arguments are addressed as may bring home 
to their acceptance also, " the words of this 
life ?" It is under the impulse of these con- 
siderations that I have, with some hesitation, 
prevailed upon myself to attempt an argu- 
ment which I think fitted to soften and sub- 
due those prejudices which lie at the bottom 



MODEHN ASTRONOMY 17 

of what may be called the infidelity of nat- 
ural science ; if possible, to bring over to the 
humility of the gospel those who expatiate 
with delight on the wonders and sublimities 
of creation, and to convince them that a 
loftier wisdom still than that even of their 
high and honorable acquirements, is the wis- 
dom of him who is resolved to know nothing 
but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 

It is truly a most Christian exercise, to 
extract a sentiment of piety from the works 
and the appearances of nature. It has the 
authority of the sacred writers upon its side, 
and even our Saviour himself gives it the 
weight and the solemnity of his example: 
'' Consider the lilies of the field — even Sol- 
omon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like 
one of these." He expatiates on the beauty 
of a single flower, and draws from it the 
delightful argument of confidence in God. 
He gives us to see that taste may be com- 
bined with piety, and that the same heart 
may be occupied with all that is serious in 
the contemplations of religion, and be at the 
same time alive to the charms and loveliness 
of nature. 

The psalmist takes a still loftier flight. 



18 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

He leaves the world, and lifts his imagination 
to that mighty expanse which spreads above 
it and around it. He wings his way through 
space, and wanders in thought over its im- 
measurable regions. Instead of a dark and 
unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded with 
splendor, and filled with the energy of the 
divine presence. Creation rises in its im- 
mensity before him, and the world, with all 
which it inherits, shrinks into littleness at a 
contemplation so vast and so overpowering. 
He wonders that he is not overlooked amid 
the grandeur and the variety which are on 
every side of him, and passing upward from 
the majesty of nature to the majesty of na- 
ture's Architect, he exclaims, '^ What is man, 
that thou art mindful of him; or the son of 
man, that thou visitest him?" 

It is not for us to say whether inspiration 
revealed to the psalmist the wonders of the 
modern astronomy. But even though the 
mind be a perfect stranger to the science of 
these enlightened times, the heavens present 
a great and an elevating spectacle — an im- 
mense concave reposing upon the circular 
boundary of the world, and the innumerable 
lights which are suspended from on high, 



MODERN ASTUONOMY. 19 

moving with solemn regularity along its sur- 
face. It seems to have heen at night that the 
piety of the psalmist was awakened by this 
contemplation, when the moon and the stars 
were visible, and not when the sun had risen 
in his strength, and thrown a splendor around 
him which bore down and eclipsed all the 
lesser glories of the firmament. And there is 
much in the scenery of a nocturnal sky to lift 
the soul to pious contemplation. That moon, 
and these stars, what are they? They are 
detached from the world, and they lift you 
above it. You feel withdrawn from the earth, 
and rise in lofty abstraction above this little 
theatre of human passions and human anxi- 
eties. The mind abandons itself to reverie, 
and is transferred in the ecstasy of its 
thoughts, to distant and unexplored regions. 
It sees nature in the simplicity of her great 
elements, and it sees the God of nature in- 
vested with the high attributes of wisdom 
and majesty. 

But what can these lights be ? The curi- 
osity of the human mind is insatiable, and 
the mechanism of these wonderful heavens 
has, in all ages, been its subject and its em- 
ployment. It has been reserved for these lat- 



20 AbTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

ter times to resolve this great and interesting 
question. The sublimest powers of philoso- 
phy have been called to the exercise, and 
astronomy may now be looked upon as the 
most certain and best established of the sci- 
ences. 

"We all know that every visible object 
appears less in magnitude as it recedes from 
the eye. The lofty vessel, as it retires from 
the coast, shrinks into littleness, and at last 
appears in the form of a small speck on the 
verge of the horizon. The eagle with its 
expanded wings is a noble object; but when 
it takes its flight into the upper regions of the 
air, it becomes less to the eye, and is seen 
like a dark spot upon the vault of heaven. 
The same is true of all magnitude. The 
heavenly bodies appear small to the eye of 
an inhabitant of this earth, only from the 
immensity of their distance. When we talk 
of hundreds of millions of miles, it is not to. 
be listened to as incredible. Por remember 
that we are talking of those bodies which are 
scattered over the immensity of space, and 
that space knows no termination. The con- 
ception is great and difficult, but the truth 
is unquestionable. By a process of measure- 



MODEUN ASTHONOMY. 21 

ment which it is unnecessary at present to 
explain, we have ascertained first the dis- 
tance/ and then the magnitude of some of 
those bodies which roll in the firmament; 
that the sun, which presents itself to the eye 
under so diminutive a form, is really a globe, 
exceeding, by. many thousands of times, the 
dimensions of the earth which we inhabit; 
that the moon itself has the magnitude of a 
world ; and that even a few of those stars 
which appear like so many lucid points to 
the unassisted eye of the observer, expand 
into large circles upon the application of the 
telescope, and are some of them much larger 
than the ball which we tread upon, and to 
which we proudly apply the denomination of 
the universe. 

Now, what is the fair and obvious pre- 
sumption ? The world in which we live is a 
round ball of a determined magnitude, and 
occupies its own place in the firmament. 
But when we explore the unlimited tracks 
of that space which is everywhere around 
us, we meet with other balls of equal or supe- 
rior magnitude, and from which our earth 
would either be invisible, or appear as small 
as any of those twinkling stars which are 



22 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

seen on the canopy of heaven. Why then 
suppose that this little spot, little at least in 
the immensity which surrounds it, should be 
the exclusive abode of life and of intelli- 
gence? "What reason to think that those 
mightier globes which roll in other parts of 
creation, and which we have discovered to 
be worlds in magnitude, are not also worlds 
in use and in dignity? Why should we 
think that the great Architect of nature, 
supreme in wisdom as he is in power, would 
call these stately mansions into existence and 
leave them unoccupied ? When we cast our 
eye over the broad sea, and look at the coun- 
try on the other side, we see nothing but the 
blue land stretching obscurely over the dis- 
tant horizon. We are too far away to per- 
ceive the richness of its scenery, or to hear 
the sound of its population. Why not extend 
this principle to the still more distant parts 
of the universe? What though, from this 
remote point of observation, we can see noth- 
ing but the naked roundness of yon planetary 
orbs ? Are we therefore to say, that they are 
so many vast and unpeopled solitudes ; that 
desolation reigns in every part of the universe 
but ours ; that the whole energy of the divine 



MODERN ASTUONOMY. 23 

attributes is expended on one insignificant 
corner of these mighty works; and that to 
this earth alone belongs the bloom of vegeta- 
tion, or the blessedness of life, or the dignity 
of rational and immortal existence ? 

But this is not all. "We have something 
more than the mere magnitude of the planets 
to allege, in favor of the idea that they are 
inhabited. We know that this earth turns 
round upon itself, and we observe that all 
these celestial bodies, which are accessible to 
such an observation, have the same move- 
ment. We know that the earth performs a 
yearly revolution round the sun ; and we can 
detect in all the planets which compose our 
system, a revolution of the same kind, and 
under the same circumstances. They have 
the same succession of day and night. They 
have the same agreeable vicissitude of the 
seasons. To them light and darkness succeed 
each other ; and the gayety of summer is fol- 
lowed by the dreariness of winter. To each 
of them the heavens present as varied and 
magnificent a spectacle ; and this earth, the 
encompassing of which would require the 
labor of years from one of its puny inhabi- 
tants, is but one of the lesser lights which 



24 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

sparkle in their firmament. To them, as 
well as to us, has God divided the light from 
the darkness, and he has called the light 
day, and the darkness he has called night. 
He has said. Let there be lights in the firma- 
ment of their heaven, to divide the day from 
the night ; and let them be for signs, and for 
seasons, and for days, and for years ; and let 
them be for lights in the firmament of heaven, 
to give lights upon their earth; and it was 
so. And G-od has also made to them great 
lights. To all of them he has given the sun, 
to rule the day; and to many of them has he 
given moons, to rule the night. To them he 
has made the stars also. And G-od has set 
them in the firmament of heaven, to give 
light unto their earth; and to rule over the 
day and over the night, and to divide the 
light from the darkness ; and God has seen 
that it was good. 

In all these greater arrangements of divine 
wisdom, we can see that God has done the 
same things for the accommodation of the 
planets, that he has done for the earth which 
we inhabit. And shall we say that the resem- 
blance stops here, because we are not in a 
situation to observe it? Shall we say that 



MODERN ASTRONOMY. 25 

this scene of magnificence has heen called 
into being merely for the amusement of a few 
astronomers ? Shall we measure the counsels 
of heaven by the narrow impotence of the 
human faculties, or conceive that silence 
and solitude reign throughout the mighty 
empire of .nature ; that the greater part of 
creation is an empty parade ; and that not 
a worshipper of the Divinity is to be found 
through the wide extent of yon vast and im- 
measurable regions ? 

It lends a delightful confirmation to the 
argument, when, from the growing perfection 
of our instruments, we can discover a new 
point of resemblance between our earth and 
the other bodies of the planetary system. It 
is now ascertained, not merely that all of 
them have their day and night, and that all 
of them have their vicissitudes of seasons, 
and that some of them have their moons, to 
rule their night and alleviate the darkness of 
it : we can see of one, that its surface rises 
into inequalities, that it swells into moun- 
tains and stretches into valleys ; of another, 
that it is surrounded by an atmosphere which 
may support the respiration of animals ; of a 
third, that clouds are formed and suspended 



Chr. Rev 



26 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

over it, which may minister to it all the 
bloom and luxuriance of vegetation ; and of 
a fourth, that a white color spreads over its 
northern regions, as its winter advances, and 
that on the approach of summer this white- 
ness is dissipated — giving room to suppose 
that the element of water abounds in it, that 
it rises by evaporation into its atmosphere, 
that it freezes upon the application of cold, 
that it is precipitated in the form of snow, 
that it covers the ground with a fleecy man- 
tle, which melts away from the heat of a 
more vertical sun ; and that other worlds 
bear a resemblance to our own, in the same 
yearly round of beneficent and interesting 
changes. 

"Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries 
of future ages ? Who can prescribe to science 
her boundaries, or restrain the active and 
insatiable curiosity of man within the circle 
of his present acquirements ? We may guess 
with plausibility what we cannot anticipate 
with confidence. The day may yet be com- 
ing when our instruments of observation shall 
be inconceivably more powerful. They may 
ascertain still more decisive points of resem- 
blance. They may lasolve the same question 



MODEHN ASTRONOMY. 27 

by the evidence of sense, which is now so abun- 
dantly convincing by the evidence of analogy. 
They may lay open to us the unquestionable 
vestiges of art and industry and intelligence. 
We may see summer throwing its green man- 
tle over these mighty tracts, and we may see 
them left naked and colorless after the flush 
of vegetation has disappeared. In the prog- 
ress of years, or of centuries, we may trace 
the hand of cultivation spreading a new 
aspect over some portion of a planetary sur- 
face. Perhaps some large city, the metrop- 
olis of a mighty empire, may expand into a 
visible spot by the powers of some future tel- 
escope. Perhaps the glass of some observer, 
in a distant age, may enable him to construct 
the map of another world, and to lay down 
the surface of it in all its minute and topical 
varieties. But there is no end of conjecture, 
and to the men of other times we leave the 
full assurance of Vv^^hat we can assert with the 
highest probability, that yon planetary orbs 
are so many worlds, that they teem with life, 
and that the mighty Being who presides in 
high authority over this scene of grandeur 
and astonishment, has there planted the wor- 
shippers of his glory. 



28 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

Did the discoyeries of science stop here, 
we have enough to justify the exclamation 
of the psahnist, "What is man, that thou 
art mindful of him ? or the son of man, that 
thou visitest him ?" They widen the empire 
of creation far beyond the limits which 
were formerly assigned to it. They give 
us to see that yonder sun, throned in the 
centre of his planetary system, gives light 
and warmth and the vicissitude of seasons, 
to an extent of surface several hundreds of 
times greater than that of the earth which 
we inhabit. They lay open to us a number 
of worlds, rolling in their respective circles 
around this vast luminary, and prove that 
the ball which we tread upon, with all its 
mighty burden of oceans and continents, in- 
stead of being distinguished from the others, 
is among the least of them, and from some 
of the more distant planets, would not occupy 
a visible point in the concave of their firma- 
ment. They let us know, that though this 
mighty earth, with all its myriads of people, 
were to sink into annihilation, there are some 
worlds where an event so awful to us would 
be unnoticed and unknown, and others where 
it would be nothing more than the disappear- 



MODERN ASTUONOMY. 29 

ance of a little star which had ceased from 
its twinkling. We should feel a sentiment 
of modesty at this just but humiliating repre- 
sentation. We should learn not to look on 
our earth as the universe of God, but one 
paltry and insignificant portion of it ; that it 
is only one of the many mansions which the 
Supreme Being has created for the accommo- 
dation of his worshippers, and only one of the 
many worlds rolling in that flood of light 
which the sun pours around him to the outer 
limits of the planetary system. 

But is there nothing beyond these limits ? 
The planetary system has its boundary, but 
space has none; and if we wing our fancy 
there, do we only travel through dark and 
unoccupied regions ? There are only five, or 
at most six, of the planetary orbs visible to 
the naked eye. What, then, is that multi- 
tude of other lights which sparkle in our fir- 
mament, and fill the whole concave of heaven 
with innumerable splendors? The planets 
are all attached to the sun ; and in circling 
around him, they do homage to that influence 
which binds them to perpetual attendance on 
this great luminary. But the other stars do 
not own his dominion. They do not circle 



30 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

around him. To all common observation 
they remain immovable; and each, like the 
independent sovereign of his own territory, 
appears to occupy the same inflexible position 
in the regions of immensity. "What can we 
make of them? Shall we take our adven- 
turous flight to explore these dark and untrav- 
elled dominions? What mean these innu- 
merable fires lighted up in distant parts of 
the universe? Are they only made to shed 
a feeble glimmering over this little spot in 
the kingdom of nature? or do they serve a 
purpose worthier of themselves, to light up 
other worlds, and give animation to other 
systems ? 

The first thing which strikes a scientific 
observer of the fixed stars, is their immeasur- 
able distance. If the whole planetary system 
were lighted up into a globe of fire, it would 
exceed, by many millions of times, the mag- 
nitude of this world, and yet only appear a 
small lucid point from the nearest of them. 
If a body were projected from the sun with 
the velocity of a cannon ball, it would take 
hundreds of thousands of years before it de- 
scribed that mighty interval which separates 
the nearest of the fixed stars from our sun 



MODEF.N ASTHONOMY. 31 

and from our system. If this earth, which 
moves at more than the inconceivable velocity 
of a million and a half miles a day, were to 
be hurried from its orbit, and to take the 
same rapid flight over this immense tract, it 
would not have arrived at the termination ot 
its journey, after taking all the time which 
has elapsed since the creation of the world. 
These are great numbers, and great calcula- 
tions, and the mind feels its own impotency 
in attempting to grasp them. We can state 
them in words. We can exhibit them in 
figures. We can demonstrate them by the 
powers of a most rigid and infallible geom- 
etry. But no human fancy can summon up 
a lively or an adequate conception — can roam 
in its ideal flight over this immeasurable 
largeness — can take in this mighty space in 
all its grandeur, and in all its immensity- — 
can sweep the outer boundaries of such a 
creation, or lift itself up to the majesty of 
that great and invisible arm, on which all is 
suspended. 

But what can those stars be which are 
seated so far beyond the limits of our planet- 
ary system? They must be masses of im- 
loaense magnitude, or they could not be seen 



32 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

at the distance of place which they occupy. 
The light which they give must proceed from 
themselves, for the feeble reflection of light 
from some other quarter would not carry it 
through such mighty tracts to the eye of an 
ohserver. A body may be visible in two 
ways. It may be visible from its own light, 
as the flame of a candle, or the brightness of 
a fire, or the brilliancy of yonder glorious sun 
which lightens all below, and is the lamp of 
the world. Or it may be visible from the 
light which falls upon it, as the body which 
receives its light from the taper that falls 
upon it; or the whole assemblage of objects 
on the surface of the earth, which appear 
only when the light of day rests upon them ; 
or the moon, which, in that part of it that 
is towards the sun, gives out a silvery white- 
ness to the eye of the observer, while the 
other part forms a black and invisible space 
in the firmament; or as the planets, which 
shine only because the sun shines upon them, 
and which, each of them, present the appear- 
ance of a dark spot on the side that is turned 
away from it. Now apply this question to 
the fixed stars. Are they luminous of them- 
selves, or do they derive their light from the 



MODEUN ASTUONOMl:. 33 

sun, like the bodies of our planetary system ? 
Think of their immense distance, and the 
solution of this question becomes evident. 
The sun, like any other body, must dwindle 
into a less apparent magnitude as you retire 
from it. At the prodigious distance even of 
the very nearest of the fixed stars, it must 
have shrunk into a small indivisible point. 
In short, it must have become a star itself, 
and could shed no more light than a single 
individual of those glimmering myriads, the 
whole assemblage of which cannot dissipate 
and can scarcely alleviate the midnight dark- 
ness of our world. These stars are visible to 
us, not because the sun shines upon them, 
but because they shine of themselves, because 
they are so many luminous bodies scattered 
over the tracts of immensity — in a word, be- 
cause they are so many suns, each throned in 
the centre of his own dominions, and pouring 
a flood of light over his own portion of these 
unlimitable regions. 

At such an immense distance for observa- 
tion, it is not to be supposed that we can col- 
lect many points of resemblance between the 
fixed stars and the solar star which forms the 
centre of our planetary system. There is one 



34 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

point of resemblance, however, which has not 
escaped the penetration of our astronomers. 
"We know that our sun turns round upon him- 
self, in a regular period of time. We also 
know that there are dark spots scattered over 
his surface, which, though invisible to the 
naked eye, are perfectly noticeable by our 
instruments. If these spots existed in greater 
quantity upon one side than upon another, it 
would have the general effect of making that 
side darker, and the revolution of the sun 
must, in such a case, give us a brighter and 
a fainter side, by regular alternations. Now, 
there are some of the fixed stars which pre- 
sent this appearance. They present us with 
periodical variations of light. Prom the splen- 
dor of a star of the first or second magnitude, 
they fade away into some of the inferior mag- 
nitudes ; and one, by becoming invisible, 
might give reason to apprehend that we had 
lost him altogether, but we can still recog- 
nize him by the telescope; till at length he 
reappears in his own place, and, after a reg- 
ular lapse of so many days and hours, recovers 
his original brightness. Now, the fair infer- 
ence from this is, that the fixed stars, as they 
resemble our sun in being so many luminous 



MODERN ASTUONOMY: 35 

masses of immense magnitudej they resemble 
him in this also, that each of them turns 
round upon his own axis ; so that if any of 
them should have an inequality in the bright- 
ness of their sides, this revolution is rendered 
evident by the regular variations in the de- 
gree of light which it undergoes. 

Shall we say, then, of these vast lumina- 
ries, that they were created in vain ? "Were 
they called into existence for no other purpose 
than to throw a tide of useless splendor over 
the solitudes of immensity ? Our sun is only 
one of these luminaries, and we know that 
he has worlds in his train. "Why should we 
strip the rest of this princely attendance ? 
Why may not each of them be the centre of 
his own system, and give light to his own 
worlds ? It is true that we see them not, 
but could the eye of man take its flight into 
those distant regions, it should lose sight of 
our little world before it reached the outer 
limits of our system; the greater planets 
should disappear in their turn : before it had 
described a small portion of that abyss which 
separates us from the fixed stars, the sun 
should decline into a little spot, and all its 
splendid retinue of worlds be lost in the ob- 



36 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSE^. 

scurity of distance ; he should, at last, shrink 
into a small indivisible atom, and all that 
could be seen of this magnificent system 
should be reduced to the glimmering of a 
little star. Why resist any longer the grand 
and interesting conclusion? Each of these 
stars may be the token of a system as vast 
and as splendid as the one which we inhabit. 
Worlds roll in these distant regions ; and 
these worlds must be the mansions of life 
and of intelligence. In yon gilded canopy of 
heaven, we see the broad aspect of the uni- 
verse, where each shining point presents us 
with a sun, and each sun with a system of 
worlds ; where the Divinity reigns in all the 
grandeur of his attributes ; where he peoples 
immensity with his wonders, and travels in 
the greatness of his strength through the 
dominions of one vast and unlimited mon- 
archy. 

The contemplation has no limits. If we 
ask the number of suns and of systems, the 
unassisted eye of man can take in a thou- 
sand, and the best telescope which the genius 
of man has constructed can take in eighty 
millions. But why subject the dominions of 
the universe to the eye of man, or to the 



MODERN ASTRONOMY 37 

powers of his genius ? Fancy may take its 
flight far beyond the ken of eye or of tele- 
scope. It may expatiate in the outer regions 
of all that is visible ; and shall we have the 
boldness to say that there is nothing there ? 
that the wonders of the Almighty are at an 
end, because we can no longer trace his foot- 
steps ? that his omnipotence is exhausted, 
because human art can no longer follow him ? 
that the creative energy of God has sunk into 
repose, because the imagination is enfeebled 
by the magnitude of its efforts, and can keep 
no longer on the wing through those mighty 
tracts, which shoot far beyond what eye hath 
seen, or the heart of man hath conceived, 
which sweep endlessly along, and merge into 
an awful and mysterious infinity ? 

Before bringing to a close this rapid and 
imperfect sketch of our modern astronomy, it 
may be right to advert to two points of inter- 
esting speculation, both of which serve to 
magnify our conceptions of the universe, and 
of course to give us a more affecting sense of 
the comparative insignificance of this our 
world. The first is suggested by the consid- 
eration, that if a body be struck in the direc- 
tion of its centre, it obtains, from this course, 



38 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

a progressive motion, but without any move- 
ment of revolution being at the same time 
impressed upon it. It simply goes forward, 
but does not turn round upon itself. But again, 
should the stroke not be in the direction of 
the centre, should the line which joins the 
point of percussion to the centre make an 
angle with that line in which the impulse 
was communicated, then the body is both 
made to go forward in space, and also to 
wheel upon its axis. In this way each of 
our planets may have had their compound 
motion communicated to it by one single 
impulse ; and, on the other hand, if ever the 
rotary motion be communicated by one blow, 
then the progressive motion must go along 
with it. In order to have the first motion 
without the second, there must be a twofold 
force applied to the body in opposite direc- 
tions. It must be set agoing in the same 
way as a spinning-top, so as to revolve about 
an axis, and to keep unchanged its situation 
in space. The planets have both motions; 
and therefore may have received them by 
one and the same impulse. The sun, we are 
certain, has one of these motions. He has a 
movement of revolution. If spun round his 



MODEEN ASTRONOMY. 39 

axis by two opposite forces, one on each side 
of him, he may have this movement, and 
retain an inflexible position in space. But if 
this movement was given him by one stroke, 
he must have a progressive motion, along 
with a whirling motion ; or, in other words, 
he is moving forward ; he is describing a 
tract in space ; and, in so doing, he carries 
all his planets and all their secondaries along 
with him. 

But at this stage of the argument, the 
matter only remains a conjectural point of 
speculation. The sun may have had his 
rotation impressed upon him by a spinning 
impulse ; or, without recurring to secondary 
causes at all, this movement may be coeval 
with his being, and he may have derived 
both the one and the other from an imme- 
diate fiat of the Creator. But there is an 
actually observed phenomenon of the heavens, 
which advances the conjecture into a prob- 
ability. In the course of ages, the stars in 
one quarter of the celestial sphere are appar- 
ently receding from each other ; and in the 
opposite quarter, they are apparently drawing 
nearer to each other. If the sun be approach- 
ing the former quarter, and receding from the 



40 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

latter, this phenomenon admits of an easy 
explanation, and we are furnished with a 
magnificent step in the scale of the Creator's 
workmanship. In the same manner as the 
planets, with their satellites, revolve round 
the sun, may the sun, with all his tributa- 
ries, be moving, in common with other stars, 
around some distant centre, from which there 
emanates an influence to bind and to sub- 
ordinate them all. They may be kept from 
approaching each other by a centrifugal 
force, without which the laws of attraction 
might consolidate into one stupendous mass 
all the distinct globes of which the universe 
is composed. Our sun may, therefore, be 
only one member of a higher family, taking 
his part along with millions of others, in 
some loftier system of mechanism, by which 
they are all subjected to one law, and to one 
arrangement, describing the sweep of such 
an orbit in space, and completing the mighty 
revolution in such a period of time, as to 
reduce our planetary seasons, and our plan- 
etary movements, to a very humble and frac- 
tionary rank in the scale of a higher astron- 
omy. There is room for all this in immensity; 
and there is even argument for all this in 



MODEUN ASTP.ONOMY. 41 

the records of actual observation ; and from 
the whole of this speculation do we gather a 
new emphasis to the lesson, how minute is 
the place, and how secondary is the impor- 
tance of our world, amid the glories of such a 
surrounding magnificence. 

But there is still another very interesting 
tract of speculation, which has been opened 
up to us by the more recent observations of 
astronomy. What we allude to is the dis- 
covery of the nehulcB. We allow that it is 
but a dim and indistinct light which this 
discovery has thrown upon the structure of 
the universe ; but still, it has spread befor@ 
the eye of the mind a field of very wide and 
lofty contemplation. Anterior to this dis- 
covery, the universe might appear to have 
been composed of an indefinite number of 
suns, about equidistant from each other, uni- 
formly scattered over space, and each encom- 
passed by such a planetary attendance as 
takes place in our own system. But we have 
now reason to think, that instead of lying uni- 
formly, and in a state of equidistance from 
each other, they are arranged into distinct 
clusters ; that in the same manner as the 
distance of the nearest fixed stars, so incon- 



42 ASTUONOIvIICAL DISCOURSES. 

ceivably superior to that of our planets from 
each other, marks the separation of the solar 
systems, so the distance of two contiguous 
clusters may be so inconceivably superior to 
the reciprocal distance of those fixed stars 
which belong to the same cluster, as to mark 
an equally distinct separation of the clusters, 
and to constitute each of them an individual 
member of some higher and more extended 
arrangement. This carries us upward through 
another ascending step in the scale of mag- 
nificence, and there leaves us wildering in 
the uncertainty whether even here the won- 
derful progression is ended ; and at all events, 
fixes the assured conclusion in our minds, 
that to an eye which could spread itself over 
the whole, the mansion which accommodates 
our species might be so very small as to lie 
wrapped in microscopical concealment; and 
in reference to the only Being who possesses 
this universal eye, well might we say, " What 
is man, that thou art mindful of him? and 
the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 

And after all, though it be a mighty and 
difficult conception, yet who can question it ? 
What is seen may be nothing to what is 
unseen; for what is seen is limited by the 



MODERN ASTHONOMY. 43 

range of our instruments. What is unseen 
has no limit ; and though all which the eye 
of man can take in, or his fancy can grasp at, 
were swept away, there might still remain 
as ample a field, over which the Divinity 
may expatiate, and which he may have peo- 
pled with innumerable worlds. If the whole 
visible creation were to disappear, it would 
leave a solitude behind it ; but to the infinite 
Mind, that can take in the whole system of 
nature, this solitude might be nothing — a 
small unoccupied point in that immensity 
which surrounds it, and which he may have 
filled with the wonders of his omnipotence. 
Though this earth were to be burned up, 
though the trumpet of its dissolution were 
sounded, though yon sky were to pass away 
as a scroll, and every visible glory which the 
finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it, 
were to be put out for ever — an event so awful 
to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by 
which so many suns would be extingmshed, 
and so many varied scenes of life and of pop- 
ulation would rush into forgetfulness — what 
is it in the high scale of the Almighty's work- 
manship ? a mere shred, which, though scat- 
tered into nothing would leave the universe 



44 ASTI10N0MICA.L DISCOURSES. 

of God one entire scene of greatness and of 
majesty. Though this earth and these heav- 
ens were to disappear, there are other worlds 
which roll afar ; the light of other suns shines 
upon them ; and the sky which mantles them 
is garnished with other stars. Is it presump- 
tion to say, that the moral world extends to 
these distant and unknown regions ? that they 
are occupied with people ? that the charities 
of home and of neighborhood flourish there ? 
that the praises of G-od are there lifted up, 
and his goodness rejoiced in ? that piety has 
its temples and its offerings ? and the rich- 
ness of the divine attributes is there felt and 
admired by intelligent worshippers ? 

And what is this world in the immensity 
which teems with them ; and what are they 
who occupy it ? The universe at large would 
suffer as little, in its splendor and variety, by 
the destruction of our planet, as the verdure 
and sublime magnitude of a forest would 
suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf 
quivers on the branch which supports it. It 
lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. 
A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and 
it lights on the stream of water which passes 
underneath. In a moment of time, the life, 



MODEUN ASTRONOMY. 45 

which we know by the microscope it teems 
with, is extinguished ; and an occurrence so 
insignificant in the eye of man, and on the 
scale of his observation, carries in it, to the 
myriads which people this little leaf, an event 
as terrible and as decisive as the destruction 
of a world. Now, on the grand scale of the 
universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, which 
performs its little round among the suns and 
the systems which astronomy has unfolded 
may feel the same littleness, and the same 
insecurity. We differ from the leaf only in 
this circumstance, that it would require the 
operation of greater elements to destroy us. 
But these elements exist. The fire which 
rages within, may lift its devouring energy 
to the surface of our planet, and transform it 
into one wide and wasting volcano. The 
sudden formation of elastic matter in the 
bowels of the earth — and it lies within the 
agency of known substances to accomplish 
this — may explode it into fragments. The 
exhalation of noxious air from below, may 
impart a virulence to the air that is around 
us; it may afiect the delicate proportion of 
its ingredients ; and the whole of animated 
nature may wither and die under the malig- 



46 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

nity of a tainted atmosphere. A blazing 
comet may cross this fated planet in its orbit, 
and realize all the terrors which superstition 
has conceived of it. We cannot anticipate 
with precision the consequences of an event 
which every astronomer must know to lie 
within the limits of chance and probability. 
It may hurry our globe toward the sun, or 
drag it to the outer regions of the planetary 
system, or give it a new axis of revolution; 
and the effect, which I shall simply announce 
without explaining it, would be to change 
the place of the ocean, and bring another 
mighty flood upon our islands and continents. 
These are changes which may happen in a 
single instant of time, and against which 
nothing known in the present system of 
things provides us with any security. They 
might not annihilate the earth, but they 
would unpeople it ; and we who tread its 
surface with such firm and assured footsteps, 
are at the mercy of devouring elements, which 
if let loose upon us by the hand of the Al- 
mighty, would spread solitude and silence 
and death over the dominions of the world. 

Now, it is this littleness, and this inse- 
curity, which makes the protection of the 



MODERN ASTRONOMY. 47 

Almighty so dear to us, and bring with such 
emphasis to every pious bosom the holy les- 
sons of humility and gratitude. The God 
who sitteth above, and presides in high 
authority over all worlds, is mindful of man ; 
and though at this moment his energy is felt 
in the remotest provinces of creation, we may 
feel the same security in his providence as 
if we were the objects of his undivided care. 
It is not for us to bring our minds up to this 
mysterious agency. But such is the incom- 
prehensible fact, that the same Being, whose 
eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives 
vegetation to every blade of grass, and motion 
to every particle of blood which circulates 
through the veins of the minutest animal — 
that though his mind takes into its compre- 
hensive grasp immensity and all its wonders, 
I am as much known to him as if I were the 
single object of his attention ; that he marks 
all my thoughts ; that he gives birth to every 
feeling and every movement within me ; and 
that, with an exercise of power which I can 
neither describe nor comprehend, the same 
God who sits in the highest heaven and 
reigns over the glories of the firmament, is 
at my right hand, to give me every breath 



48 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

which I draw, and every comfort which I 
enjoy. 

But this very reflection has been appro- 
priated to the use of infidelity, and the very 
language of the text has been made to bear 
an application of hostility to the faith: 
'' What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? 
or the son of man, that thou visitest him?'' 
Is it likely, says the infidel, that G-od would 
send his eternal Son to die for the puny occu- 
piers of so insignificant a province in the 
mighty field of his creation ? Are we the 
befitting objects of so great and so signal an 
interposition ? Does not the largeness of that 
field which astronomy lays open to the view 
of modern science, throw a suspicion over the 
truth of the gospel history; and how shall 
we reconcile the greatness of that wonderful 
movement which was made in heaven for the 
redemption of fallen man, with the compara- 
tive meanness and obscurity of our species ? 

This is a popular argument against Chris- 
tianity, not much dwelt upon in books, but, 
we believe, a good deal insinuated in con- 
versation, and having no small influence on 
the amateurs of a superficial philosophy. At 
all events, it is right that every such argu- 



MODERN ASTTuONOMY. 49 

meiit should be met, and manfully confronted ; 
nor do we know a more discreditable surren- 
der of our religion, than to act as if she had 
any thing to fear from the ingenuity of her 
most accomplished adversaries. The author 
of the following treatise engages in his pres- 
ent undertaking, under the full impression 
that a something may be found with which 
to combat infidelity in all its forms ; that the 
truth of God and of his message admits of a 
noble and decisive manifestation, through 
every mist which the pride, or the prejudice, 
or the sophistry of man may throw around 
it; and elevated as the wisdom of him may 
be, who has ascended the heights of science, 
and poured the lights of demonstration over 
the most wondrous of nature's mysteries, that 
even out of his own principles it may be 
proved how much more elevated is the wis- 
dom of him who sits with the docility of a 
little child to his Bible, and casts down to its 
authority all his lofty imaginations. 



Cixr. Rev 



5C ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES 



DISCOURSE II. 

THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 

" And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth 
nothing yet as he ought to know." 1 Cor. 8 : 2. 

There is much profound and important 
wisdom in that proverb of Solomon where it 
is said, that the heart knoweth its own bitter- 
ness. It forms part of a truth still more com- 
prehensive, that every man knoweth his own 
peculiar feelings and difficulties and trials far 
better than he can get any of his neighbors 
to perceive them. It is natural to us all; 
that we should desire to engross, to the utter- 
most, the sympathy of others with what is 
most painful to the sensibilities of our own 
bosom, and with what is most aggravating in 
the hardships of our own situation. But 
labor it as we may, we cannot, with every 
power of expression, make an adequate con- 
veyance, as it were, of all our sensations, and 
of all our circumstances, into another under- 
standing. There is a something in the inti- 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 51 

macy of a man's own experience, which he 
cannot make to pass entire into the heart and 
mind even of his most familiar companion ; 
and thus it is that he is so often defeated in 
his attempts to ohtain a full and a cordial 
possession of his sympathy. He is mortified, 
and he wonders at the ohtuseness of the peo- 
ple around him, and how he cannot get them 
to enter into the justness of his complainings ; 
nor to feel the point upon which turn the 
truth and the reason of his remonstrances ; 
nor to give their interested attention to the 
case of his peculiarities and of his wrongs; 
nor to kindle in generous resentment, along 
with him, when he starts the topic of his 
indignation. He does not reflect, all the 
while, that with every human being he ad- 
dresses, there is an inner man, which forms a 
theatre of passions and of interests as busy, 
as crowded, and as fitted as his own to en- 
gross the anxious and the exercised feelings 
of a heart which can alone understand its 
own bitterness, and lay a correct estimate on 
the burden of its own visitations. Every 
man we meet carries about with him, in the 
unperceived solitude of his bosom, a little 
world of his own; and we are just as blind, 



52 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

and as insensible, and as dull, both of percep- 
tion and of sympathy, about his engrossing 
objects, as he is about ours; and did we 
suffer this observation to have all its weight 
upon us, it might serve to make us more 
candid, and more considerate of others. It 
might serve to abate the monopolizing selfish- 
ness of our nature. It might serve to soften 
down all the malignity which comes out of 
those envious contemplations that we are so 
apt to cast on the fancied ease and prosperity 
which are around us. It might serve to rec- 
oncile every man to his own lot, and dispose 
him to bear, with thankfulness, his own bur- 
den ; and sure I am, if this train of sentiment 
were prosecuted with firmness and calmness 
and impartiality, it would lead to the conclu- 
sion, that each profession in life has its own 
peculiar pains, and its own besetting incon- 
veniences ; that from the very bottom of 
society, up to the very golden pinnacle which 
blazons upon its summit, there is much in 
the shape of care and of suffering to be found ; 
that throughout all the conceivable varieties 
of human condition, there are trials which 
can neither be adequately told on the one 
side, nor fully understood on the other ; that 



MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 53 

the ways of God to man are as equal in this, 
as in every department of his administration ; 
and that, go to what ever quarter of human 
experience we may, we shall find how he 
has provided enough to exercise the patience, 
and to accomplish the purposes of a wise and 
a salutary discipline upon all his children. 

I have brought forward this observation 
that it may prepare the way for a second. 
There are perhaps no two sets of human 
beings who comprehend less the movements, 
and enter less into the cares and concerns of 
each other, than the wide and busy public on 
the one hand, and on the other, those men 
of close and studious retirement, whom the 
world never hears of, save when from their 
thoughtful solitude there issues forth some 
splendid discovery, to set the world on a gaze 
of admiration. Then will the brilliancy of 
a superior genius draw every eye towards it ; 
and the homage paid to intellectual supe- 
riority, will place its idol on a loftier emi- 
nence than all wealth or than all titles can 
bestow ; and the name of the successful phi- 
losopher will circulate, in his own age, over 
the whole extent of civilized society, and be 
borne down to posterity in the characters of 



54 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

ever-enduring remembrance : and thus it is, 
that when we look back on the days of New- 
ton, we annex a kind of mysterious greatness 
to him, who, by the pure force of his under- 
. standing, rose to such a gigantic elevation 
above the level of ordinary men ; and the 
kings and warriors of other days sink into 
insignificance around him, and he at this 
moment stands forth to the public eye in a 
prouder array of glory than circles the mem- 
ory of all the men of former generations ; and 
while all the vulgar grandeur of other days is 
now mouldering in forgetfulness, the achieve- 
ments of our great astronomer are still fresh 
in the veneration of his countrymen, and they 
carry him forward on the stream of time with 
a reputation ever gathering, and the triumphs 
of a distinction that will never die. 

. Now, the point that I want to impress 
upon you is, that the same public who are 
so dazzled and overborne by the lustre of all 
this superiority, are utterly in the dark as to 
what that is which confers its chief merit on 
ihe philosophy of Newton. They see the 
result of his labors, but they know not how 
to appreciate the difficulty or the extent of 
them. They look on the stately edifice he 



MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 55 

has reared, bat they know not what he had 
to do in settlmg the foundation which gives 
to it all its stability ; nor are they aware 
Vf hat painful encounters he had to make, 
both with the natural predilections of his 
own heart, and with the prejudices of others, 
when employed on the work of laying to- 
gether its unperishing materials. They have 
never heard of the controversies which this 
man of peaceful unambitious modesty had 
to sustain, with all that was proud and all 
that was intolerant in the philosophy of the 
age. They have never, in thought, entered 
that closet which was the scene of his patient 
and profound exercises ; nor have they gone 
along with him, as he gave his silent hours 
to the labors of the midnight oil, and plied 
that unwearied task to which the charm of 
lofty contemplation had allured him ; nor 
have they accompanied him through all the 
workings of that wonderful mind, from which, 
as from the recesses of a laboratory, there 
came forth such gleams and processes of 
thought as shed an effulgency over the whole 
amplitude of nature. All this the public 
have not done ; for of this the great majority, 
even of the reading and cultivated public, 



56 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

are utterly incapable ; and therefore is it that 
they need to be told what that is in ■wli.ich 
the main distinction of his philosophy lies ; 
that when laboring in other fields of investi- 
gation, they may know how to borrow from 
his safe example, and how to profit by that 
superior wisdom which marked the whole 
conduct of his understanding. 

Let it be understood, then, that they are 
the positive discoveries of Newton, which, in 
the eye of a superficial public, confer upon 
him all his reputation. He discovered the 
mechanitt^m of the planetary system. He dis- 
covered the composition of light. He discov- 
ered the cause of those alternate movements 
which take place on the waters of the ocean. 
These form his actual and his visible achieve- 
ments. These are what the world look at as 
the monuments of his greatness. These are 
doctrines by which he has enriched the field 
of philosophy ; and thus it is that the whole 
of his merit is supposed to lie in having had 
the sagacity to perceive, and the vigor to lay 
hold of the proofs which conferred upon these 
doctrines all the establishment of a most rigid 
and conclusive demonstration. 

But while he gets all his credit and all his 



MODESTY OY TRUE SCIENCE. 57 

admiration for those articles of science which 
he has added to the creed of philosophers, he 
deserves as much credit and admiration for 
those articles which he kept out of this creed, 
as for those which he introduced into it. It 
was the property of his mind, that it kept a 
tenacious hold of every one position which 
had proof to substantiate it; but it forms a 
property equally characteristic, and which, in 
fact, gives its leading peculiarity to the whole 
spirit and style of his investigations, that he 
put a most determined exclusion on every 
one position that was destitute of such proof 
He would not admit the astronomicar theories 
of those who went before him, because they 
had no proof. He would not give in to their 
notions about the planets wheeling their 
rounds in whirlpools of ether ; for he did not 
see this ether — he had no proofs of its exist- 
ence ; and besides, even supposing it to exist, 
it would not have impressed on the heavenly 
bodies such movements as met his observa- 
tion. He would not submit his judgment to 
the reigning systems of the day ; for though 
they had authority to recommend them, they 
had no proof; and thus it is that he evinced 
the strength and the soundness of his phi- 



58 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUP.SES. 

losophy as much by his decisions upon those 
doctrines of science which he rejected, as by 
his demonstration of those doctrines of science 
which he was the first to propose, and which 
now stand out to the eye of posterity as the 
only monuments to the force and superiority 
of his understanding. 

He wanted no other recommendation for 
any one article of science, than the recom- 
mendation of evidence ; and with this recom- 
mendation, he opened to it the chamber of 
his mind, though authority scowled upon it, 
and taste was disgusted by it, and fashion 
was ashamed of it, and all the beauteous 
speculation of former days was cruelly broken 
up by this new announcement of the better 
philosophy, and scattered like the fragments 
of an aerial vision, over which the past gen- 
erations of the world had been slumbering 
their profound and their pleasing reverie. 
But on the other hand, should the article of 
science want the recommendation of evi- 
dence, he shut against it all the avenues of 
his understanding — aye, and though all an- 
tiquity lent their suffrages to it, and all elo- 
quence had thrown around it the most attrac- 
tive brilliancy, and all habit had incorporated 



MODESTY OF THUE SCIENCE. 59 

it with every system of every seminary in 
Europe, and all fancy had arrayed it in graces 
of the most tempting solicitation; yet was 
the steady and inflexihle mind of Newton 
proof against this whole weight of authority 
and allurement, and casting his cold and 
unwelcome look at the specious plausibility, 
he rebuked it from his presence. The strength 
of his philosophy lay as much in refusing 
admittance to that which wanted evidence, 
as in giving a place and an occupancy to that 
which possessed it. In that march of intel- 
lect which led him onward through the rich 
and magnificent field of his discoveries, he 
pondered every step ; and while he advanced 
with a firm and assured movement where- 
ever the light of evidence carried him, he 
never suffered any glare of imagination or 
of prejudice to seduce him from his path. 

Sure I am, that in the prosecution of his 
wonderful career, he found himself on a way 
beset with temptation upon every side of him. 
It was not merely that he had the reigning 
taste and philosophy of the times to contend 
with; but he expatiated on a lofty region, 
where, in all the giddiness of success, he 
might have met with much to solicit his 



60 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES: 

fancy, and tempt him to some devious specu- 
lation. Had he been like the majority of 
other men, he would have broken free from 
the fetters of a sober and chastised under- 
standing, and giving wing to his imagina- 
tion, had done Avhat philosophers have done 
after him— been carried away by some me- 
teor of their own forming, or found their 
amusement in some of their own intellectual 
pictures, or palmed some loose and confident 
plausibilities of their own upon the world. 
But Newton stood true to his principle, that 
he would take up with nothing which wanted 
evidence, and he kept by his demonstrations 
and his measurements and his proofs ; and if 
it be true that he who ruleth his own spirit 
is greater than he who taketh a city, there 
was won, in the solitude of his chamber, 
many a repeated victory over himself, which 
should give a brighter lustre to his name 
than all the conquests he has made on the 
field of discovery, or than all the splendor of 
his positive achievements. 

I trust you understand how, though it be 
one of the maxims of the true philosophy, 
never to shrink from a doctrine which has 
evidence on its side ; it is another maxim, 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 61 

equally essential to it, never to harbor any 
doctrine when this evidence is wanting. 
Take these two maxims along with you, and 
you will be at no loss to explain the pecu- 
liarity which, more than any other, goes both 
to characterize and to ennoble the philosophy 
of Newton. What I allude to, is the pre- 
cious combination of its strength and of its 
modesty. On the one hand, what greater evi- 
dence of strength than the fulfilment of that 
mighty enterprise by which the heavens have 
been made its own, and the mechanism of 
unnumbered worlds has been brought within 
the grasp of the human understanding ? Now, 
it was by walking in the light of sound and 
competent evidence that all this was accom- 
plished. It was by the patient, the strenuous, 
the unfaltering application of the legitimate 
instruments of discovery. It was by touching 
that which was tangible, and looking to that 
which was visible, and computing that which 
was measurable, and in one word, by making 
a right and a reasonable use of all that proof 
which the field of nature around us has 
brought within the limit of sensible observa- 
tion. This is the arena on which the modern 
philosophy has won all her victories, and fill- 



62 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

filled all her wondrous achievements, and 
reared all her proud and enduring monu- 
ments, and gathered all her magnificent tro- 
phies to that power of intellect with which 
the hai:id of a bounteous heaven has so richly 
gifted the constitution of our species. 

But on the other hand, go beyond the 
limits of sensible observation, and from that 
moment the genuine disciples of this enlight- 
ened school cast all their confidence and all 
their intrepidity away from them. Keep 
them on the firm ground of experiment, and 
none more bold and more decisive in their 
announcements of all that they have evidence 
for ; but off* this ground, none more humble, 
or more cautious of any thing like positive 
announcements than they. They choose nei- 
ther to know, nor to believe, nor to assert, 
where evidence is wanting; and they will 
sit, with all the patience of a scholar to his 
task, till they have found it. They are utter 
strangers to that haughty confidence with 
which some philosophers of the day sport 
the plausibilities of unauthorized speculation, 
and by which, unmindful of the limit that 
separates the region of sense from the region 
of conjecture, they make their blind and their 



MODESTY OF THUE SCIENCE. 63 

impetuous inroads into a province which does 
not belong to them. There is no one object 
to which the exercised mind of a true New- 
tonian disciple is more familiarized than this 
limit, and it serves as a boundary by which 
he shapes and bounds and regulates all the 
enterprises of his philosophy. All the space 
which lies within this limit he cultivates to 
the uttermost, and it is by such successive 
labors, that every year which rolls over the 
world is witnessing some new contribution to 
experimental science, and adding to the solid- 
ity and aggrandizement of this wonderful 
fabric. But if true to their own principle, 
then, in reference to the forbidden ground 
which lies without this limit, those very 
men, who on the field of warranted exertion 
evinced all the hardihood and vigor of a full 
grown understanding, show on every subject 
where the light of evidence is withheld from 
them, all the modesty of children. They 
give you positive opinion only when they 
have indisputable proof; but when they have 
no such proof, then they have no such opin- 
ion. The single principle of their respect to 
truth, secures their homage for every one 
position where the evidence of truth is pres- 



64 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

ent, and at the same time begets an entire 
diffidence about every one position from which 
this evidence is disjoined. And thus you 
may understand how the first man in the 
accomplishments of philosophy which the 
world ever saw, sat at the book of nature in 
the humble attitude of its interpreter and its 
pupil ; how all the docility of conscious igno- 
rance threw a sweet and softening lustre 
around the radiance even of his most splen- 
did discoveries ; and while the flippancy of a 
few superficial acquirements is enough to 
place a philosopher of the day on the pedestal 
of his fancied elevation, and to vest him with 
an assumed lordship over the whole domain 
of natural and revealed knowledge, I cannot 
forbear to do honor to the unpretending great- 
ness of Newton^ than whom I know not if 
there ever lighted on the face of our world 
one in the character of whose admirable 
genius so much force and so much humility 
were more attractively blended. 

I now propose to carry you forward, by a 
few simple illustrations, to the argument of 
this day. All the sublime truths of the mod- 
ern astronomy lie within the field of actual 
observation, and have the firm evidence to 



\ MODESTY OF THUE SCIENCE. 65 

rest upon of all that information wliicla is 
conveyed to us by the avenue of the senses. 
Sir Isaac Newton never went beyond this 
field, without a reverential impression upon 
his mind of the precariousness of the ground 
on which he was standing. On this ground 
he never ventured a positive affirmation, but 
resigning the lofty tone of demonstration, and 
putting on the modesty of conscious igno- 
rance, he brought forward all he had to say 
in the humble form of a doubt, or a conjec- 
ture, or a question. But what he had not 
confidence to do, other philosophers have done 
after him, and they have winged their auda- 
cious way into forbidden regions, and they 
hPtve crossed that circle by which the field 
of observation is inclosed, and there have they 
debated and dogmatized with all the pride 
of a most intolerant assurance. 

Now, though the case be imaginary, let us 
conceive, for the sake of illustration, that one 
of these philosophers made so extravagant a 
departure from the sobriety of experimental 
science, as to pass on from the astronomy of 
the different planets, and to attempt the nat- 
ural history of their animal and vegetable 
kingdoms. He might get hold of some vague 



66 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES 

and general analogies, to throw an air of 
plausibility around his speculation. He might 
pass from the botany of the different regions 
of the globe that we inhabit, and make his 
loose and confident applications to each of 
the other planets, according to its distance 
from the sun, and the inclination of its axis 
to the plane of its annual revolution ; and 
out of some such slender materials he may 
work up an amusing philosophical romance, 
full of ingenuity, and having, withal, the 
color of truth and of consistency spread 
over it. 

I can conceive how a superficial public 
might be delighted by the eloquence of such 
a composition, and even be impressed by its 
arguments ; but were I asked, which is the 
man of all the ages and countries in the 
world who would have the least respect for 
this treatise upon the plants which grow on 
the surface of Jupiter, I should be at no loss 
to answer the question. I should say that 
it would be he who had computed the mo- 
tions of Jupiter ; that it would be he who had 
measured the bulk and the density of Jupi- 
ter ; that it would be he who had estimated 
the periods of Jupiter ; that it would be he 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 67 

whose observant eye and patiently calculat- 
ing mind had traced the satellites of Jupiter 
through all the rounds of their mazy circula- 
tion, and unravelled the intricacy of all their 
movements. He would see at once that the 
subject lay at a hopeless distance beyond the 
field of legitimate observation. It would be 
quite enough for him, that it was beyond the 
range of his telescope. On this ground, and 
on this ground only, would he reject it as one 
of the puniest imbecilities of childhood. As 
to any character of truth or of importance, it 
would have no more effect on such a mind as 
that of Newton, than any illusion of poetry ; 
and from the eminence of his intellectual 
throne would he cast a penetrating glance at 
the whole speculation, and bid its gaudy insig- 
nificance away from him. 

But let us pass onward to another case, 
which though as imaginary as the former, 
may still serve the purpose of illustration. 

This same adventurous philosopher may 
be conceived to shift his speculation from the 
plants of another world to the character of its 
inhabitants. He may avail himself of some 
slender correspondences between the heat of 
the sun and the moral temperament of the 



6S ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

people it shines upon. He may work np a 
-theory which carries on the front of it some 
of the characters of plausibility, but surely it 
does not require the philosophy of Newton to 
demonstrate the folly of such an enterprise. 
There is not a man of plain understanding, 
who does not perceive that this said ambitious 
inquirer has got without his reach ; that he 
has stepped beyond the field of experience, 
and is now expatiating on the field of imag- 
ination ; that he has ventured on a dark un- 
known, where the wisest of all philosophy is 
the philosophy of silence, and a profession of 
ignorance is the best evidence of a solid under- 
standing ; that if he thinks he knows any thing 
on such a subject as this, he knoweth nothing 
yet as he ought to know. He knows not 
what Newton knew, and what he kept a 
steady eye upon throughout the whole march 
of his sublime investigations. He knows not 
the limit of his own faculties. He has over- 
leaped the barrier which hems in all the pos- 
sibilities of human attainment. He has wan- 
tonly flung himself off from the safe and firm 
field of observation, and got on that undis- 
coverable ground where by every step he 
takes he widens his distance from the true 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 69 

philosophy, and by every affirmation he utters 
he rebels against the authority of all its 
maxims. 

I can conceive it the feeling of every one 
of you, that I have hitherto indulged in a 
vain expense of argument, and it is most 
natural for you to put the question, '^ What 
is the precise point of convergence to which 
you are directing all the light of this abundant 
and seemingly superfluous illustration ?" 

In the astronomical objection which infi- 
delity has proposed against the truth of the 
Christian revelation, there is first an assertion, 
and then an argument. The assertion is, 
that Christianity is set up for the exclusive 
benefit of our minute and solitary world. 
The argument is; that Grod would not lavish 
such a quantity of attention on so insignifi- 
cant a field. Even though the assertion were 
admitted, I should have a quarrel with the 
argument. But the futility of the objection 
is not laid open in all its extent, unless we 
expose the utter want of all essential evi- 
dence even for the truth of the assertion. 
How do Infidels know that Christianity is 
set up for the single benefit of this earth and 
its inhabitants? How are they able to tell 



70 ^ ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

US, that if you go to other planets the perscu 
and religion of Jesus are there unknown to 
them? We challenge them to the proof of 
this so positive announcement of theirs. AVe 
see in this objection the same rash and gra- 
tuitous procedure which was so apparent in 
the two cases that we have already advanced 
for the purpose of illustration. We see in it 
the same glaring transgression on the spirit 
and the maxims of that very philosophy which 
they profess to idolize. They have made 
their argument against us out of an assertion 
which has positively no feet to rest upon ; 
an assertion which they have no means what- 
ever of verifying ; an assertion, the truth or 
the falsehood of which can only be gathered 
out of some supernatural message, for it lies 
completely beyond the range of human obser- 
vation. It is willingly admitted, that by an 
attempt at the botany of other worlds, the 
true method of philosophizing is trampled on ; 
for this is a subject that lies beyond the 
range of actual observation, and every per- 
formance upon it must be made up of asser 
tions without proofs. It is also willingly 
admitted, that an attempt at the civil and 
political history of their people, would be an 



MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 71 

equally extravagant departure from the spirit 
of the true philosophy ; for this also lies beyond 
the field of actual observation, and all that 
could possibly be mustered up, on such a sub- 
ject as this, v^ould still be assertions without 
proofs. Now, the theology of these planets 
is, in every way, as inaccessible a subject as 
their politics or their natural history ; and 
therefore it is that the objection, grounded 
on the confident assumption of those infidel 
astronomers who assert Christianity to be 
the religion of this one world, or that the 
religion of these other worlds is not our very 
Christianity, can have no influence on a mind 
that has derived its habits of thinking from 
the pure and rigorous school of Newton ; for 
the whole of this assertion is just as glaringly 
destitute, as in the two former instances, of 
proof. 

The man who could embark in an enter- 
prise so foolish and so fanciful, as to theorize 
it on the details of the botany of another 
world, or to theorize it on the natural and 
moral history of its people, is just making as 
outrageous a departure from all sense and all 
science and all sobriety, when he presumes to 
speculate or to assert on the details or the 



72 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

inethods of God's aduiinistration among its 
rational and accountable inhabitants. He 
wings his fancy to as hazardous a region, and 
vainly strives a penetrating vision through 
the mantle of as deep an obscurity. All the 
elements of such a speculation are hidden 
from. him. For any thing he can tell, sin has 
found its way into these other worlds. For 
any thing he can tell, their people have ban- 
ished themselves from communion with God. 
Por any thing he can tell, many a visit has 
been made to each of them on the subject of 
our common Christianity, by commissioned 
messengers from the throne of the Eternal. 
Por any thing he can tell, the redemption 
proclaimed to us is not one solitary instance, 
or not the whole of that redemption which 
is by the Son of God ; but only our part in a 
plan of mercy, equal in magnificence to all 
that astronomy has brought within the range 
of human contemplation. For any thing he 
can tell, the moral pestilence which walks 
abroad over the face of our world, may have 
spread its desolation over all the planets of 
all the systems which the telescope has made 
known to us. For any thing he can tell, 
some mighty redemption has been devised in 



MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 73 

heaven, to meet this disaster in the whole 
extent and malignity of its visitations. Por 
any thing he can tell, the wonder-working 
God, who has strewed the field of immensity 
with so many worlds, and spread the shelter 
of his omnipotence over them, may have sent 
a message of love to each, and reassured the 
hearts of its despairing people hy some over- 
powering manifestation of tenderness. For 
any thing he can tell, angels from paradise 
may have sped to every planet their dele- 
gated way, and sung from each azure canopy 
a joyful annunciation, and said, '^Peace be to 
this residence, and good will to all its fam- 
ilies, and glory to Him in the highest, who 
from the eminence of his throne has issued 
an act of grace so magnificent, as to carry 
the tidings of life and of acceptance to the 
unnumbered orbs of a sinful creation." For 
any thing he can tell, the eternal Son, of 
whom it is said, that by him the worlds were 
created, may have had the government of 
many sinful worlds laid upon his shoulders ; 
and by the power of his mysterious word, 
have awoke them all from that spiritual 
death, to which they had sunk in lethargy 
as profound as the slumbers of non-existencCe 

Chr. Rev. 4 



74 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

For any thing he can tell, the one Spirit who 
moved on the face of the waters, and whose 
presiding influence it was that hushed the 
wild war of nature's elements, and made a 
beauteous system emerge out of its disjointed 
materials, may now be working with the 
fragments of another chaos, and educing 
order and obedience and harmony out of the 
wrecks of a moral rebellion which reaches 
through all these spheres, and spreads disorder 
to the uttermost limits of our astronomy. 

But here I stop, nor shall I attempt to 
grope my dark and fatiguing way, by an- 
other inch, among such sublime and myste- 
rious secrecies. It is not I who am offering 
to lift this curtain. It is not I who am 
pitching my adventurous flight to the secret 
things which belong to Grod, away from the 
things that are revealed, and which belong 
to me and to my children. It is the cham- 
pion of that very infidelity which I am now 
combating. It is he who props his unchris- 
tian argument by presumptions fetched out 
of those untravelled obscurities which lie on 
the other side of a barrier that I pronounce 
to be impassable. It is he who transgresses 
the limits which Newton forbore to enter; 



MODESTY OF THUE SCIENCE. 7^ 

because, with a justness which reigns through- 
out all his inquiries, he saw the limit of his 
own understanding, nor would he venture 
himself beyond it. It is he who has bor- 
rowed from the philosophy of this wondrous 
man a few dazzling conceptions, which have 
only served to bewilder him, while, an utter 
stranger to the spirit of his philosophy, he has 
carried a daring and an ignorant speculation 
far beyond the boundary of its prescribed and 
allowable enterprises. It is he who has mus- 
tered against the truths of the gospel, resting, 
as it does, on evidence within the reach of 
his faculties, an objection, for the truth of 
which he has no evidence whatever. It is 
he who puts away from him a doctrine, for 
which he has the substantial and the familiar 
proof of human testimony, and substitutes in 
its place a doctrine for which he can get no 
other support than from a reverie of his own 
imagination. It is he who turns aside from 
all that safe and certain argument that is 
supplied by the history of this world, of which 
he knows something, and who loses himself 
in the work of theorizing about other worlds, 
of the moral and theological history of which 
he positively knows nothing. Upon him, and 



76 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

not upon us, lies the folly of launcMng his 
impetuous way beyond the province of obser- 
vation — of letting his fancy afloat among the 
unknown of distant and mysterious regions; 
and by an act of daring, as impious as it is 
unphilosophical, of trying to unwrap that 
shroud, which, till drawn aside by the hand 
of a messenger from heaven, will ever veil 
from human eye the purposes of the Eternal. 
If you have gone along with me in the 
preceding observations, you will perceive how 
they are calculated to disarm of all its point, 
and of all its energy, that flippancy of Vol- 
taire, when in the examples he gives of the 
dotage of the human understanding, he tells 
us of Bacon having believed in witchcraft, 
and Sir Isaac Newton having written a Com- 
mentary on the book of Eevelation. The 
former instance we shall not undertake to 
vindicate, but in the latter instance we per- 
ceive what this brilliant and specious, but 
withal superficial apostle of infidelity either 
did not see, or refused to acknowledge. "We 
see in this intellectual labor of our great 
philosopher, the working of the very same 
principles which carried him through the pro^ 
foundest and the most successful of his investi- 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 77 

gations ; and how he kept most sacredly and 
most consistently by those very maxims the 
authority of which he, even in the full vigor 
and manhood of his faculties, ever recognized. 
We see in the theology of Newton the very 
spirit and principle which gave all its sta- 
bility, and all its sureness, to the philosophy 
of Newton. We see the same tenacious ad- 
herence to every one doctrine, that had such 
valid proof to uphold it, as could be gath- 
ered from the field of human experience; 
and we see the same firm resistance of every 
one argument, that had nothing to recom- 
mend it but such plausibilities as could easily 
be devised by the genius of man, when he 
expatiated abroad on those fields of creation 
which the eye never witnessed, and from 
which no messenger ever came to us with 
any credible information. Now, it was on 
the former of these two principles that New- 
ton clung so determinedly to his Bible, as 
the record of an actual annunciation from 
Grod to the inhabitants of this world. When 
he turned his attention to this book, he came 
to it with a mind tutored to the philosophy 
of facts ; and when he looked at its creden- 
tials, he saw the stamp and the impress of 



78 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

this philosophy on every one of them. He 
saw the fact of Christ being a messenger 
from heaven, in the audible language by 
which it was conveyed from heaven's canopy 
to human ears. He saw the fact of his being 
an approved ambassador of God, in those 
miracles which carried their own resistless 
evidence along with them to human eyes. 
He saw the truth of this whole history 
brought home to his own conviction by a 
sound and substantial vehicle of human tes- 
timony. He saw the reality of that super- 
natural light, which inspired the prophecies 
he himself illustrated, by such an agreement 
with the events of a various and distant 
futurity as could be taken cognizance of by 
human observation. He saw the wisdom of 
God pervading the whole substance of the 
written message, in such manifold adapta- 
tions to the circumstances of man, and to the 
whole secrecy of his thoughts and his affec- 
tions and his spiritual wants and his moral 
sensibilities, as even in the mind of an ordi- 
nary and unlettered peasant, can be attested 
by human consciousness. These formed the 
solid materials of the basis on which our 
experimental philosopher stood ; and there 



MODESTY OF TRUE SCIEjNCE. 79 

was nothing in the whole compass of his own 
astronomy to dazzle him away from it; and 
he was too well aware of the limit between 
what he knew, and what he did not know, 
to be seduced from the ground he had taken 
by any of those brilliancies which have since 
led so many of his humble successors into 
the track of infidelity. He had measured the 
distances of these planets. He had calcu- 
lated their periods. He had estimated their 
figures and their bulk and their densities, 
and he had subordinated the whole intricacy 
of their movements to the simple and sub- 
lime agency of one commanding principle. 
But he had too much of the ballast of a sub- 
stantial understanding about him to be thrown 
afloat by all this success among the plausi- 
bilities of wanton and unauthorized specula- 
tion. He knew the boundary which hemmed 
him. He knew that he had not thrown one 
particle of light on the moral or religious 
history of these planetary regions. *He had 
not ascertained what visits of communication 
they received from the God who upholds 
them. But he knew that the fact of a real 
visit made to this planet had such evidence 
to rest upon, that it was not to be disposted 



80 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

by any aerial imagination. And when I look 
at the steady and unmoved Christianity of 
this wonderful man, so far from seeing any 
symptom of dotage and imbecility, or any 
forgetfulness of those principles on which the 
fabric of his philosophy is reared, do I see, 
that in sitting doAvn to the work of a Bible 
commenta,tor, he hath given us their most 
beautiful and most consistent exemplifica- 
tion. 

I did not anticipate such a length of time, 
and of illustration, in this stage of my argu- 
ment. But I will not regret it, if I have 
familiarized the minds of any of my readers 
to the reigning principle of this discourse. 
We are strongly disposed to think that it is a 
principle which might be made to apply to 
every argument of every unbeliever, and so 
to serve not merely as an antidote against 
the infidelity of astronomers, but to serve as 
an antidote against all infidelity. We are 
well aware of the diversity of complexion 
which infidelity puts on. It looks one thing 
in the man of science and of liberal accomplish- 
ment. It looks another thing in the refined 
voluptuary. It looks still another thing in the 
commonplace railer against the artifices of' 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 81 

priestly domination. It looks another thing 
in the dark and unsettled spirit of him whose 
every reflection is tinctured with gall, and 
who casts his envious and malignant scowl 
at all that stands associated with the estab- 
lished order of society. It looks another 
thing in the prosperous man of business, who 
has neither time nor patience for the details 
of the Christian evidence ; but who, amid 
the hurry of his other occupations, has gath- 
ered as many of the lighter petulances of the 
infidel writers, and caught from the perusal 
of them as contemptuous a tone towards the 
religion of the New Testament, as to set 
him at large from the decencies of religious 
observation, and to give him the disdain of an 
elevated complacency over all the follies of 
what he counts a vulgar superstition. And 
lastly, for infidelity has now got down among 
us to the humblest walks of life, may it 
occasionally be seen lowering on the fore- 
head of the resolute and hardy artificer, who 
can lift his menacing voice against the priest- 
hood, and looking on the Bible as a jugglery 
of theirs, can bid stout defiance to all its 
denunciations. Now, under all these vari- 
eties, we think that there might be detected 

4* 



82 • ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

the one and universal principle which we 
have attempted to expose. The something, 
whatever it is, which has dispossessed all 
these people of their Christianity, exists in 
their minds in the shape of a position which 
they hold to be true, but which, by no legit- 
imate evidence, they have ever realized ; and 
a position which lodges within them as a 
wilful fancy or presumption of their own, 
but which could not stand the touchstone 
of that wise and solid principle, in virtue of 
which the followers of Newton give to obser- 
vation the precedence over theory. It is a 
principle altogether worthy of being labored ; 
as, if carried round in faithful and consistent 
application among these numerous varieties, 
it is able to break up all the existing infi^ 
delity of the world. 

But there is one other most important 
conclusion to which it carries us. It carries 
us, with all the docility of children, to the 
Bible, and puts us down into the attitude 
of an unreserved surrender of thought and 
understanding to its authoritative informa- 
tion. Without the testimony of an authentic 
messenger from heaven, I know nothing of 
heaven's counsels. I never heard of any 



MODESTY or TRUE SCIENCE. 83 

moral telescope that can bring to my obser- 
vation the doings or the deliberations which 
are taking place in the sanctuary of the 
Eternal. I may put into the registers of 
my belief all that comes home to me through 
the senses of the outer man, or by the con- 
sciousness of the inner man. But neither 
the one nor the other can tell me of the 
purposes of God — can tell me of the trans- 
actions or the designs of his sublime mon- 
archy — can tell me of the goings forth of 
Him who is from everlasting unto everlast- 
ing — can tell me of the march and the move- 
ments of that great administration which 
embraces all v/orlds, and takes into its wide 
and comprehensive survey the mighty roll 
of innumerable ages. It is true, that my 
fancy may break its impetuous way into this 
lofty and inaccessible field ; and through the 
devices of my heart, which are many, the 
visions of an ever-shifting theology may take 
their alternate sway over me ; but the coun- 
sel of the Lord, it shall stand. And I repeat 
it, that if true to the leading principle of 
that philosophy which has poured such a 
flood of light over the mysteries of nature, 
we shall dismiss every self-formed concep- 



84 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

tion of our own, and wait in all the humility 
of conscious ignorance, till the Lord himself 
shall break his silence, and make his counsel 
known by an act of communication. And 
now that a professed communication is before 
me, and that it has all the solidity of the 
experimental evidence on its side, and noth- 
ing but the reveries of a daring speculation 
to oppose it, what is the consistent, what 
is the rational, what is the philosophical use 
that should be made of this document, but 
to set me down, like a school-boy, to the 
work of turning its pages and conning its 
lessons, and submitting the every exercise 
of my judgment to its information and its 
testimony ? We know that there is a super- 
ficial philosophy, which casts the glare of a 
most seducing brilliancy around it, and spurns 
the Bible, with all the doctrine and all the 
piety of the Bible, away from it; and has 
infused the spirit of Antichrist into many of 
the literary establishments of the age; but 
it is not the solid, the profound, the cautious 
spirit of that philosophy which has done so 
much to ennoble the modern period of our 
world ; for the more that this spirit is cul- 
tivated and understood, the more will it be 



MODESTY OF TUUE SCIENCE. 85 

found in alliance with that spirit, in virtue 
of which all that exalteth itself against the 
knowledge of Grod is humbled, and all lofty 
imaginations are cast down, and every thought 
of the heart is brought into the captivity of 
the obedience of Christ. 



86 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES 



DISCOURSE III. 

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIYINE CONDESCENSION. 

" Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dweUeth on high, 
who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, 
and in the earth !" Psalm 113 : 5, 6. 

In our last discourse we attempted to ex- 
pose the total want of evidence for the asser- 
tion of the infidel astronomer ; and this reduces 
the whole of our remaining controversy with 
him to tj:ie business of arguing against a mere 
possibility. Still, however, the answer is not 
so complete as it might be, till the soundness 
of the argument be attended to, as well as 
the credibility of the assertion; or, in oth^r 
words, let us admit the assertion, and take a 
view of the reasoning which has been con- 
structed upon it. 

We have already attempted to lay before 
you the wonderful extent of that space, teem- 
ing with unnumbered worlds, which modern 
science has brought within the circle of its 
discoveries. We even ventured to expatiate 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 87 

on those tracks of infinity which lie on the 
other side of all that eye or that telescope 
hath made known to us — to shoot afar into 
those ulterior regions which are beyond the 
limits of our astronomy — to impress you with 
the rashness of the imagination that the cre- 
ative energy of G-od had sunk exhausted by 
the magnitude of its efforts, at that very line 
through which the art of man, lavished as 
it has been on the work of perfecting the 
instruments of vision, has not yet been able 
to penetrate : and upon all this we hazarded 
the assertion, that though all these visible 
heavens were to rush into annihilation, and 
the besom of the Almighty's wrath were to 
sweep from the face of the universe those 
millions, and millions more of suns and of 
systems, which lie within the grasp of our 
actual observation, that this event, which to 
our eye would leave so wide and* so dismal 
a solitude behind it, might be nothing in the 
eye of Him who could take in the whole, but 
the disappearance of a little speck from that 
field of created things which the hand of his 
omnipotence had thrown around him. 

But to press home the sentiment of the 
text, it is not necessary to stretch the imag- 



88 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

ination beyond the limit of our actual dis- 
coveries. It is enough to strike our minds 
with the insignificance of this world, and of 
all who inhabit it, to bring it into measure- 
ment with that mighty assemblage of worlds 
which lie open to the eye of man, aided as it 
has been by the inventions of his genius. 
When we told you of the eighty millions of 
suns, each occupying his own independent 
territory in space, and dispensing his own 
influences over a cluster of tributary worlds, 
this world could not fail to sink into little- 
ness in the eye of him who looked to all the 
magnitude and variety which are around it. 
We gave you but a feeble image of our com- 
parative insignificance, when we said that 
the glories of an extended forest would suffer 
no more. from the fall of a single leaf, than 
the glories of this extended universe would 
suffer, though the globe we tread, ''and all 
that it inherit, should dissolve." And when 
we lift our conceptions to Him who has peo- 
pled immensity with all these wonders — who 
sits enthroned on the magnificence of his own 
works, and by one sublime idea can embrace 
the whole extent of that boundless amplitude 
which he has filled with the trophies of his 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 89 

divinity, we cannot but resign our whole 
heart to the psahnist's exclamation of, ''What 
is man, that thou art mindful of him? and 
the son of man, that thou visitest him ?" 

Now mark the use to which all this has 
been turned by the genius of infidelity. 
Such an humble portion of the universe as 
ours could never have been the object of 
such high and distinguishing attentions as 
Christianity has assigned to it. Grod would 
not have manifested himself in the flesh for 
the salvation of so paltry a world. The mon- 
arch of a whole continent would never move 
from his capital, and lay aside the splendor 
of royalty, and subject himself for months, or 
for years, to perils and poverty and persecu- 
tion, and take up his abode in some small 
islet of his dominions which, though swal- 
lowed by an earthquake, could not be missed 
amid the glories of so wide an empire ; and 
all this to regain the lost affections of a few 
families upon its surface. And neither would 
the eternal Son of God — he v/ho is revealed 
to us as having made all worlds, and as 
holding an empire, amid the splendors of 
which, the globe that we inherit is shaded 
in insignificance — neither would he strip 



90 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

himself of the glory he had with the Father 
before the world was, and light on this lower 
scene, for the purpose imputed to him in the 
New Testament. Impossible that the con- 
cerns of this puny ball, which floats its little 
round among an infinity of larger worlds, 
should be of such mighty account in the 
plans of the Eternal, or should have given 
birth in heaven to so wonderful a movement 
as the Son of G-od putting on the form of our 
degraded species and sojourning among us, 
and sharing in all our infirmities, and crown- 
ing the whole scene of humiliation by the 
disgrace and the agonies of a cruel martyr- 
dom. 

This has been started as a difficulty in 
the way of the Christian revelation ; and it 
is the boast of many of our philosophical infi- 
dels, that by the light of modern discovery 
the light of the New Testament is eclipsed 
and overborne ; and the mischief is not con- 
fined to philosophers, for the argument has 
got into other hands, and the popular illus- 
trations that are now given to the sublimest 
truths of science, have widely disseminated 
all the Deism that has been grafted upon 
it; and the high tone of a decided contempt 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 91 

for the gospel is now associated with the 
flippancy of superficial acquirements ; and 
while the venerable Newton, whose genius 
threw open these mighty fields of contempla- 
tion, found a fit exercise for his powers in the 
interpretation of the Bible, there are thou- 
sands and tens of thousands who, though 
walking in the light which he holds out to 
them, are seduced by a complacency which 
he never felt, and inflated by a pride which 
never entered into his pious and philosoph- 
ical bosom, and whose only notice of the 
Bible is to depreciate and to deride and to 
disown it. 

Before entering into what we conceive to 
be the right answer to this objection, let us 
previously observe, that it goes to strip the 
Deity of an attribute which forms a wonder- 
ful addition to the glories of his incompre- 
hensible character. It is indeed a mighty 
evidence of the strength of his arm, that so 
many millions of worlds are suspended on it ; 
but it would surely make the high attribute 
of his power more illustrious, if, while it expa- 
tiated at large among the suns and the sys- 
tems of astronomy, it could at the very same 
instant be impressing a movement and a 



92 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

direction on all the minuter wheels of that 
machinery which is working incessantly 
around us. It forms a noble demonstration 
of his wisdom, that he gives unremitting 
operation to those laws which uphold the 
stability of this great universe ; but it would 
go to heighten that wisdom inconceivably, 
if, while equal to the magnificent task of 
maintaining the order and harmony of the 
spheres, it was lavishing its inexhaustible 
resources on the beauties and varieties and 
arrangements of every one scene, however 
humble, of every one field, however narrow, of 
the creation he had formed. It is a cheering 
evidence of the delight he takes in commu- 
nicating happiness, that the whole of im- 
mensity should be so strewed with the habi- 
tations of life and of intelligence ; but it 
would surely bring home the evidence with 
a nearer and a more affecting impression to 
every bosom, did we know, that at the very 
time his benignant regard took in the mighty 
circle of created beings, there was not a 
single family overlooked by him, and that 
every individual in every corner of his domin- 
ions was as effectually seen to, as if the 
object of an exclusive and undivided care. 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 93 

It is our imperfection, that we cannot give 
our attention to more than one object at one 
and the same instant of time ; but surely it 
would elevate our* every idea of the perfec- 
tions of Godj did we know, that while his 
comprehensive mind could grasp the whole 
amplitude of nature, to the very outermost of 
its boundaries, he had an attentive eye fast- 
ened on the very humblest of its objects, and 
pondered every thought of my heart and 
noticed every footstep of my goings, and 
treasured up in his remembrance every turn 
and every movement of my history. 

And lastly, to apply this train of senti- 
ment to the matter before us, let us suppose 
that one among the countless myriads of 
worlds should be visited by a moral pesti- 
lence, which spread through all its people, 
and brought them under the doom of a law 
whose sanctions were unrelenting and immu- 
table ; it were no disparagement to G-od, 
should he, by an act of righteous indignation, 
sweep this offence away from the universe 
which it deformed ; nor should we wonder, 
though among the multitude of other worlds, 
from which the ear of the Almighty was 
regaled with the songs of praise, and the 



94 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

incense of a pure adoration ascended to his 
throne, he should leave the strayed and soli- 
tary world to perish in the guilt of its rebel- 
lion. But, tell me, tell me, would it not 
throw the softening of a most exquisite ten- 
derness over the character of God, should we 
see him putting forth his every expedient 
to reclaim to himself those children who had 
wandered away from him ; and few as they 
were when compared with the host of his 
obedient worshippers, would it not just im- 
part to his attribute of compassion the infinity 
of the G-odhead, that rather than lose the 
single world which had turned to its own 
way, he should send the messengers of peace 
to woo and to welcome it back again; and 
if justice demanded so mighty a sacrifice, and 
the law behooved to be so magnified and made 
honorable, tell me whether it would not throw 
a moral sublime over the goodness of the 
Deity, should he lay upon his own Son the 
burden of its atonement, that he might again 
smile upon the world, and hold out the sceptre 
of invitation to all its families ? 

We avow it, therefore, that this infidel 
argument goes to expunge a perfection from 
the character of God. The more we know of 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 95 

the extent of nature, should not we have the 
loftier conception of Him vrho sits in high 
authority over the concerns of so wide a uni- 
verse? But is it not adding to the hright 
catalogue of his other attributes to say, that 
while magnitude does not overpower him, 
minuteness cannot escape him, and variety 
cannot bewilder him ; and that at the very 
time while the mind of the Deity is abroad 
over the whole vastness of creation, there is 
not one particle of matter, there is not one 
individual principle of rational or of animal 
existence, there is not one single world in 
that expanse which teems with them, that 
his eye does not discern as constantly, and 
his hand does not guide as unerringly, and 
his Spirit does not watch and care for as vigi- 
lantly, as if it formed the one and exclusive 
object of his attention? 

The thing' is inconceivable to us, whose 
minds are so easily distracted by a number 
of objects, and this is tlie secret principle of 
the whole infidelity I am now alluding to. 
To bring Grod to the level of our own compre- 
hension, we would clothe him in the impo- 
tency of a man. We would transfer to his 
wonderful mind all the imperfection of our 



96 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

own faculties. When we are taught by 
astronomy that he has millions of worlds to 
look after, and thus add in one direction to 
the glories of his character, we take away 
from them in another, by saying that each of 
these worlds must be looked after imperfectly. 
The use. that we make of a discovery which 
should heighten our every conception of Grodj 
and humble us into the sentiment that a 
Being of such mysterious elevation is to us 
unfathomable, is to sit in judgment over him, 
aye, and to pronounce such a judgment as 
degrades him, and keeps him down to the 
standard of our own paltry imagination ! We 
are introduced by modern science to a mul- 
titude of other suns and of other systems, and 
the perverse interpretation we put upon the 
fact, that Grod can diffuse the benefits of his 
power and of his goodness over such a variety 
of worlds, is, that he cannot] or will not, 
bestow so much goodness on one of those 
worlds as a professed revelation from heaven 
has announced to us. While we enlarge the 
provinces of his empire, we tarnish all the 
glory of this enlargement, by saying, he has 
so much to care for, that the care of every 
one province must be less complete and less 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 97 

vigilant and less effectual than it would 
otherwise have been. By the discoveries of 
modern science, we multiply the places of 
the creation ; but along with this, we would 
impair the attribute of his eye being in every 
place to behold the evil and the good; and 
thus, while we magnify one of his perfec- 
tions, we do it at the expense of another; 
and to bring him within the grasp of our 
feeble capacity, we would deface one of the 
glories of that character which it is our part 
to adore, as higher than all thought, and as 
greater than all comprehension. 

The objection we are discussing I shall 
state again in a single sentence. Since 
astronomy has unfolded to us such a number 
of worlds, it is not likely that God would 
pay so much attention to this one world, and 
set up such wonderful provisions for its ben- 
efit, as are announced to us in the Christian 
revelation. This objection will have received 
its answer, if we can meet it by the follow- 
ing position : that God, in addition to the 
bare faculty of dwelling on a multiplicity of 
objects at one and the same time, has this 
faculty in such wonderful perfection, that he 
can attend as fully and provide as richly and 

Chr. Rev. 5 



98 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

manifest all his attributes as illustriously, on 
every one of these objects, as if the rest had 
no existence and no place whatever in his 
government or in his thoughts. 

Por the evidence of this position we ap- 
peal, in the first place, to the personal history 
of each individual among you. Only grant 
us, that God never loses sight of any one 
thing he has created, and that no created 
thing can continue either to be or to act 
independently of him ; and then, even upon 
the face of this world, humble as it is on the 
great scale of astronomy, how widely diversi- 
fied, and how multiplied into so many thou- 
sand distinct exercises, is the attention of 
God. His eye is upon every hour of my 
existence. His Spirit is intimately present 
with every thought of my heart. His inspi- 
ration gives birth to every purpose within 
me. His hand impresses a direction on every 
footstep of my goings. Every breath I inhale 
is drawn by an energy which God deals out 
to me. This body, which upon the slightest 
derangement would become the prey of death, 
or of woful suffering, is now at ease, because 
he at this moment is warding off" from me 
a thousand dangers, and upholding the thou- 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 99 

sand movements of its complex and delicate 
machinery. His presiding influence keeps 
by me through the whole current of my rest- 
less and ever-changing history. When I 
v^alk by the wayside, he is along with me. 
When I enter into company, amid all my 
forgetfulness of him, he never forgets me. 
In the silent watches of the night, when my 
eyelids have closed, and my spirit has sunk 
into unconsciousness, the observant eye of 
Him who never slumbers is upon me. I can- 
not fly from his presence. G-o where I will, 
he tends me and watches me and cares for 
me; and the same Being who is now at 
work in the remotest domains of nature and 
of providence, is also at my right hand to 
eke out to me every moment of my being, 
and to uphold me in the exercise of all my 
feelings, and of all my faculties. 

Now, what God is doing with me, he is 
doing with every distinct individual of this 
world's population. The intimacy of his 
presence and attention and care reaches to 
one and to all of them. With a mind unbur- 
dened by the vastness of all its other con- 
cerns, he can prosecute, without distraction, 
the government and guardianship of every 



.100 A&TEONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

one son and daughter of the species. And is 
it for us, in the face of all this experience, 
ungratefully to draw a limit around the per- 
fections of G-od — to aver that the multitude 
of other worlds has withdrawn any portion of 
his benevolence from the one we occupy ; or 
that He, whose eye is upon every separate 
family of the earth, would not lavish all the 
riches of his unsearchable attributes on some 
high plan of pardon and immortality, in be- 
half of its countless generations ? 

But, secondly, were the mind of Grod so 
fatigued and so occupied with the care of 
other worlds, as the objection presumes him 
to be, should we not see some traces of neg- 
lect, or of carelessness, in his management of 
ours? Should we not behold, in many a 
field of observation, the evidence of its Master 
being overcrowded with the variety of his 
other engagements ? A man oppressed by a 
multitude of business, would simplify and 
reduce the work of any new concern that 
was devolved upon him. Now, point out 
a single mark of G-od being thus oppressed. 
Astronomy has laid open to us so many realms 
of creation which were before unheard of, 
that the world we inhabit shrinks into one 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 101 

remote and solitary province of his wide mon- 
archy. Tell me, then, if in any one field of 
this province which man has access to, you 
witness a single indication of Grod sparing 
himself — of G-od reduced to languor by the 
weight of his other employments — of Grod 
sinking under the burden of that vast super- 
intendence which lies upon him — of God 
being exhausted, as one of ourselves would 
be, by any number of concerns, however great, 
by any variety of them, however manifold ; 
and do you not perceive, in that mighty pro- 
fusion of wisdom and of goodness which is 
scattered everywhere around us, that the 
thoughts of this unsearchable Being are not 
as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways ? 

My time does not suffer me to dwell on 
this topic, because, before I conclude, I must 
hasten to another illustration. But when I 
look abroad on the wondrous scene that is 
immediately before me, and see that in every 
direction it is a scene of the most various 
and unwearied activity, and expatiate on all 
the beauties of that garniture by which it is 
adorned, and on all the prints of design and 
of benevolence which abound in it, and think 
that the same G-od who holds the universe, 



102 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOUKSES. 

with rts every system, in the hollow of his 
hand, pencils every jBlower, and gives nourish- 
ment to every blade of grass, and actuates 
the movements of every living thing, and is 
not disabled by the weight of his other cares 
from enriching the humble department of 
nature I occupy, with charms and accommo- 
dations of the most unbounded variety ; then 
surely, if a message bearing every mark of 
authenticity should profess to come to me 
from Grod, and inform me of his mighty 
doings for the happiness of our species, it is 
not for me, in the face of all this evidence, 
to reject it as a tale of imposture, because 
astronomers have told me that he has so 
many other worlds and other orders of beings 
to attend to ; and when I think that it were 
a deposition of him from his supremacy over 
the creatures he has formed, should a single 
sparrow fall to the ground without his ap- 
pointment, then let science and sophistry try 
to cheat me of my comfort as they may, I 
will not let go the anchor of my confidence in 
G-od — I will not be afraid, for I am of more 
value than many sparrows. 

But thirdly, it was the telescope, that by 
piercing the obscurity which lies between us 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 103 

and distant worlds, put infidelity in posses- 
sion of the argument against which we are 
now contending. But about the time of its 
invention another instrument was formed, 
which laid open a scene no less wonderful, 
and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man 
with a discovery which serves to neutralize 
the whole of this argument. This was the 
microscope. The one led me to see a system 
in every star ; the other leads me to see a 
world in every atom. The one taught me 
that this mighty globe, with the whole burden 
of its people and of its countries, is but a 
grain of sand on the high field of immensity ; 
the other teaches me that every grain of 
sand may harbor within it the tribes and the 
families of a busy population. The one told 
me of the insignificance of the world I tread 
upon ; the other redeems it from all its 
insignificance, for it tells me that in the 
leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of 
every garden, and in the waters of every riv- 
ulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and 
numberless as are the glories of the firma- 
ment. The one has suggested to me, that 
beyond and above all that is visible to man, 
there may lie fields of creation which sweep 



104 ASTP.ONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

immeasurably along, and carry the impress of 
the Almighty's hand to the remotest scenes 
of the universe ; the other suggests to me, 
that within and beneath all that minuteness 
which the aided eye of man has been able to 
explore, there may be a region of invisibles ; 
and that could we draw aside the mysterious 
curtain which shrouds it from our senses, we 
might there see a theatre of as many wonders 
as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within 
the compass of a point so small as to elude 
all the powers of the microscope, but where 
the wonder-working God finds room for the 
exercise of all his attributes, where he can 
raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill 
and animate them all with the evidences of 
his glory. 

Now, mark how all this may be made to 
meet the argument of our infidel astronomer. 
By the telescope they have discovered that 
no magnitude, however vast, is beyond the 
grasp of the Divinity. But by the microscope 
we have also discovered, that no minuteness, 
however shrunk from the notice of the human 
eye, is beneath the condescension of his 
regard. Every addition to the powers of the 
one instrument, extends the limit of his vis- 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 105 

ible dominions ; but by every addition to the 
powers of the other instrument, we see each 
part of them more crowded than before with 
the wonders of his unwearying hand. The 
one is constantly widening the circle of his 
territory ; the other is as constantly filling 
up its separate portions with all that is rich 
and various and exquisite. In a w^ord, by 
the one I am told that the Almighty is now 
at work in regions more distant than geom- 
etry has ever measured, and among worlds 
more manifold than numbers have ever reach- 
ed ; but by the other I am also told, that 
with a mind to comprehend the whole in the 
vast compass of its generality, he has also a 
mind to concentrate a close and a separate 
attention on each and on all of its particulars ; 
and that the same God who sends forth an 
upholding influence among the orbs and the 
movements of astronomy, can fill the recesses 
of every single atom with the intimacy of his 
presence, and travel in all the greatness of 
his uniiripaired attributes, upon every one spot 
and corner of the universe he has formed. 

They, therefore, who think that God will 
not put forth such a power and such a good- 
ness and such a condescension in behalf of 



106 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

this world, as are ascribed to him in the 
New Testament, because he has so many 
other worlds to attend to, think of him as a 
man. They confine their view to the infor- 
mations of the telescope, and forget altogether 
the informations of the other instrument. 
They only find room in their minds for his 
one attribute of a large and general superin- 
tendence, and keep out of their remembrance 
the equally impressive proofs we have for his 
other attribute of a minute and multiplied 
attention to all that diversity of operations, 
where it is he that worketh all in all. And 
when I think that as one of the instruments 
of philosophy has heightened our every im- 
pression of the first of these attributes, so 
another instrument has no less heightened 
our impression of the second of them ; then I 
can no longer resist the conclusion, that it 
would be a transgression of sound argument, 
as well as a daring of impiety, to draw a 
limit around the doings of this unsearchable 
God ; and should a professed revelation from 
heaven tell me of an act of condescension, 
in behalf of some separate world, so won- 
derful that angels desired to look into it, and 
the eternal Son had to move from his seat 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 107 

of glory to carry it into accomplishment, all 
I ask is the evidence of such a revelation; 
for let it tell me as much as it may of God 
letting himself down for the benefit of one 
single province of his dominions, this is no 
more than what I see lying scattered, in 
numberless examples, before me, and run- 
ning through the whole line of my recol- 
lections, and meeting me in every walk of 
observation to which I can betake myself; 
and now that the microscope has unveiled 
the wonders of another region, I see strewed 
around me, with a profusion which baffles 
my every attempt to comprehend it, the evi- 
dence that there is no one portion of the uni- 
verse of Grod too minute for his notice, nor 
too humble for the visitations of his care. 

As the end of all these illustrations, let 
me bestow a single paragraph on what I 
conceive to be the precise state of this argu- 
ment. 

It is a wonderful thing that God should 
be so unencumbered by the concerns of a 
whole universe, that he can give a constant 
attention to every moment of every indi- 
vidual in this world's population. But won- 
derful as it is, you do not hesitate to admit 



108 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

it as true, on the evidence of your own recol- 
lections. It is a wonderful thing, that He 
whose eye is at every instant on so many 
worlds, should have peopled the world we 
inhabit with all the traces of the varied 
design and benevolence which abound in it. 
But great as the wonder is, you do not allow 
so much as the shadow of improbability to 
darken it, for its reality is what you actu- 
ally witness, and you never think of ques- 
tioning the evidence of observation. It is 
wonderful, it is passing wonderful, that the 
same God, whose presence is diffused through 
immensity, and who spreads the ample can- 
opy of his administration over all its dwelling- 
places, should, with an energy as fresh and 
as unexpended as if he had only begun the 
work of creation, turn him to the neighbor- 
hood around us, and lavish on its every hand- 
.breadth all the exuberance of his goodness, 
and crowd it with the many thousand vari- 
eties of conscious existence. But be the 
wonder incomprehensible as it may, you do 
not suffer in your mind the burden of a 
single doubt to lie upon it, because you do 
not question the report of the microscope. 
You do not refuse its information, nor turn 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 109 

away from it as an incompetent channel of 
evidence. But to bring it still nearer to the 
point at issue, there are many who never 
looked through a microscope, but who rest 
an implicit faith in all its revelations; and 
upon what evidence ? I would ask. Upon 
the evidence of testimony — upon the credit 
they give to the authors of the books they 
have read, and the belief they put in the 
record of their observations. Now, at this 
point I make my stand. It is wonderful 
that God should be so interested in the 
redemption of a single world, as to send 
forth his well-beloved Son upon the errand, 
and he to accomplish it should, mighty to 
save, put forth all his strength, and travail 
in the greatness of it. But such wonders as 
these have already multiplied upon you ; and 
when evidence is given of their truth, you 
have resigned your every judgment of the 
unsearchable G-od, and rested in the faith of 
them. I demand, in the name of sound and 
consistent philosophy, that you do the same 
in the matter before us, and take it up as 
a question of evidence, and examine that 
medium of testimony through which the mir- 
acles and informations of the gospel have 



110 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

come to your door, and go not to admit as 
argument here what would not be admitted 
as argument in any of the analogies of nature 
and observation, and take along with you 
in this field of inquiry a lesson which you 
should have learned upon other fields, even 
the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and the knowledge of God, that his judg- 
ments are unsearchable, and his ways are 
past finding out. 

I do not enter at all into the positive 
evidence for the truth of the Christian rev- 
elation, my single aim at present being to 
dispose of one of the objections which is 
conceived to stand in the way of it. Let me 
suppose then that this is done to the satis- 
faction of a philosophical inquirer, and that 
the evidence is sustained, and that the same 
mind that is familiarized to all the sublim- 
ities of natural science, and has been in the 
habit of contemplating God in association 
with all the magnificence which is around 
him, shall be brought to submit its thoughts 
to the captivity of the doctrine of Christ; 
0, with what veneration and gratitude and 
wonder should he look on the descent of Him 
into this lower world, who made all these 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. Ill 

things, and without whom was not any thing 
made that was made. What a grandeur 
does it throw over every step in the redemp- 
tion of a fallen world, to think of its being 
done by Him who unrobed him of the glories 
of so wide a monarchy, and came to this 
humblest of its provinces in the disguise of 
a servant, and took upon him the form of 
our degraded species, and let himself down 
to sorrows and to sufferings and to death for 
us. In this love of an expiring Saviour to 
those for whom in agony he poured out his 
soul, there is a height and a depth and a 
length and a breadth more than I can com- 
prehend; and let me never, from this mo- 
ment, neglect so great a salvation, or lose 
my hold of an atonement, made sure by Him 
who cried that it was finished, and brought 
in an everlasting righteousness. It was not 
the visit of an empty parade that he made 
to us. It was for the accomplishment of 
some substantial purpose; and if that pur- 
pose is announced, and stated to consist in 
his dying, the just for the unjust, that he 
might bring us unto Grod, let us never doubt 
of our acceptance in that way of communi- 
cation with our Father in heaven, which he 



112 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

hath opened and made known to us. In 
taking to that way, let ns follow his every 
direction with that humility which a sense 
of all this wonderful condescension is fitted 
to inspire. Let us forsake all that he bids 
us forsake. Let us do all that he bids us 
do. Let us give ourselves up to his guid- 
ance with the docility of children, overpow- 
ered bv a kindness that we never merited, 
and a love that is unequalled by all the 
perverseness and all the ingratitude of our 
stubborn nature; for what shall we render 
unto him for such mysterious benefits — to 
him who has thus been mindful of us — to 
him who thus has deigned to visit us ? 

But the whole of this argument is not 
yet exhausted. We have scarcely entered on 
the defence that is commonly made against 
the plea which infidelity rests on the won- 
derful extent of the universe of G-od, and 
the insignificancy of our assigned portion oi 
it. The way in which we have attempted 
to dispose of this plea, is by insisting on the 
evidence that is everywhere around us, of 
God combining with the largeness of a vast 
and mighty superintendence, which reaches^ 
the outskirts of creation and spreads over 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 113 

all its amplitudes, the faculty of bestowing 
as much attention, and exercising as com- 
plete and manifold a wisdom, and lavish- 
ing as profuse and inexhaustible a good- 
ness, on each of its humblest departments, 
as if it formed the whole extent of his ter- 
ritory. 

In the whole of this argument, we have 
looked upon the earth as isolated from the 
rest of the universe altogether. But accord- 
ing to the way in which the astronomical 
objection is commonly met, the earth is not 
viewed as in a state of detachment from the 
other worlds, and the other orders of being 
which Grod has called into existence. It is 
looked upon as a iriember of a more ex- 
tended system. It is associated with the 
magnificence of a moral empire as wide as 
the kingdom of nature. It is not merely 
asserted, what in our last discourse has been 
already done, that for any thing we can 
know by reason, the plan of redemption may 
have its influences and its bearings on those 
creatures of G-od who people other regions, 
and occupy other fields in the immensity of 
his dominions; that to argue, therefore, on 
this plan being instituted for the single 



114 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

benefit of the world we live in, and of the 
species to which we belong, is a mere pre- 
sumption of the infidel himself; and that 
the objection he rears on it must fall to the 
ground, when the vanity of the presump- 
tion is exposed. The Christian apologist 
thinks he can go farther than this — that he 
can not merely expose the utter baseless- 
ness of the infidel assertion, but that he has 
positive ground for erecting an opposite and 
a confronting assertion in its place ; and 
that after having neutralized their position, 
by showing the entire absence of all obser- 
vation in its behalf, he can pass on to the 
distinct and affirmative testimony of the 
Bible. 

We do think that this lays open a very 
interesting track, not of wild and fanciful, 
but of most legitimate and sober-minded 
speculation. And anxious as we are to put 
every thing that bears upon the Christian 
argument into all its lights ; and fearless as 
we feel for the result of a most thorough 
sifting of it; and thinking as we do think 
it, the foulest scorn that any pigmy philos- 
opher of the day should mince his ambig- 
uous scepticism to a set of giddy and igno- 



THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 115 

rant admirers, or that a half-learned and 
superficial public should associate with the 
Christian priesthood the blindness and big- 
otry of a sinking cause : with these feelings, 
we are not disposed to blink a single ques- 
tion that may be started on the subject of 
the Christian evidences. There is not one 
of its parts or bearings which needs the 
shelter of a disguise thrown over it. Let 
the priests of another faith ply their pru- 
dential expedients, and look so wise and so 
wary in the execution of them; but Chris- 
tianity stands in a higher and a firmer atti- 
tude. The defensive armor of a shrinking 
or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is 
the naked majesty of truth; and with all 
the grandeur of age, but with none of its 
infirmities, has she come down to us, and 
gathered new strength from the battles she 
has won in the many controversies of many 
generations. With such a religion as this 
there is nothing to hide. All should be 
above-board. And the broadest light of day 
should be made fully and freely to circulate 
throughout all her secrecies. But secrets 
she has none. To her belong the frankness 
land the simplicity of conscious greatness, and 



116 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSE'S. 

whether she grapple with the pride of phi- 
losophy, or stand in fronted opposition to the 
prejudices of the multitude, she does it upon 
her own strength, and spurns all the props 
and all the auxiliaries of superstition away 
from her. 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 117 



DISCOURSE IV. 

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MOEAL HISTORY 
IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 

*' Which things the angels desire to look into." 1 Pet. 1 : 12. 

There is a limit across which man can- 
not carry any one of his perceptions, and 
from the ulterior of which he cannot gather 
a single observation to guide or to inform 
him. "While he keeps by the objects which 
are near, he can get the knowledge of them 
conveyed to his mind through the ministry 
of several of the senses. He can feel a sub- 
stance that is within reach of his hand. He 
can smell a flower that is presented to him. 
He can taste the food that is before him. He 
can hear a sound of certain pitch and inten- 
sity ; and so much does this sense of hearing 
widen his intercourse with external nature, 
that from the distance of miles it can bring 
him in an occasional intimation. 

But of all the tracks of conveyance which 
God has been pleased to open up between 



118 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

the mind of man and the theatre by which 
he is surrounded, there is none by which he 
so multiplies his acquaintance with the rich 
and the varied creation on every side of him, 
as by the organ of the eye. It is this which 
gives to man his loftiest command over the 
scenery of nature. It is this by which so 
broad a range of observation is submitted to 
him. It is this which enables him, by the 
act of a single moment, to send an exploring 
look over the surface of an ample territory, 
to crowd his mind with the whole assembly 
of its objects, and to fill his vision with those 
countless hues which diversify and adorn it. 
It is this which carries him abroad over all 
that is sublime in the immensity of distance, 
which sets him as it were on an elevated plat- 
form, from whence he may cast a surveying 
glance over the arena of innumerable worlds ; 
which spreads before him so mighty a prov- 
ince of contemplation, that the earth he 
inhabits only appears to furnish him with 
the pedestal on which he may stand, and 
from which he may descry the wonders of all 
that magnificence which the Divinity has 
poured so abundantly around him. It is by 
the narrow outlet of the eye, that the mind 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OP MAN. 119 

of man takes its excursive flight over those 
golden tracks where, in all the exhaustless- 
ness of creative wealth, lie scattered the suns 
and the systems of astronomy. But 0, how 
good a thing it is, and how becoming well, for 
the philosopher to be humble even amid the 
proudest march of human discovery, and the 
sublimest triumphs of the human understand- 
ing, when he thinks of that unsealed barrier, 
beyond which no power, either of eye or ot 
telescope, shall ever carry him; when he 
thinks that on the other side of it there is a 
height and a depth and a length and a 
breadth to which the whole of this concave 
and visible firmament dwindles into the insig- 
nificancy of an atom; and above all, how 
ready should he be to cast his every lofty 
imagination away from him, when he thinks 
of the God who, on the simple foundation of 
his word, has reared the whole of this stately 
architecture, and by the force of his preserv- 
ing hand continues to uphold it; aye, and 
should the word again come out from him, 
that this earth shall pass away, and a por- 
tion of the heavens which are around it shall 
again fall back into the annihilation from 
which he at first summoned them, what an 



120 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

impressive rebuke does it bring on the swell- 
ing vanity of science, to think that the whole 
field of its most ambitious enterprises may- 
be swept away altogether, and there remain 
before the eye of Him who sitteth on the 
throne, an untravelled immensity, which he 
hath filled with innumerable splendors, and 
over the whole face of which he hath in- 
scribed the evidence of his high attributes, 
in all their might, and in all their manifes- 
tation. 

But man has a great deal more to keep 
him humble of his understanding, than a 
mere sense of that boundary which skirts 
and which terminates the material field of 
his contemplations. He ought also to feel, 
how within that boundary the vast majority 
of things is mysterious and unknown to him ; 
that even in the inner chamber of his own 
consciousness, where so much lies hidden 
from the observation of others, there is also 
to himself a little world of incomprehensibles ; 
that if stepping beyond the limits of this 
familiar home, he look no farther than to the 
members of his family, there is much in the 
cast and the color of every mind that is above 
his powers of divination ; that in proportion 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 121 

as he recedes from the centre of his own per- 
sonal experience, there is a cloud of igno- 
rance and secrecy, which spreads and thick- 
ens and throws a deep and impenetrable veil 
over the intricacies of every one department 
of human contemplation; that of all around 
him, his knowledge is naked and superficial, 
and confined to a few of those more conspic- 
uous lineaments which strike upon his senses ; 
that the whole face, both of nature and of 
society, presents him with questions which 
he cannot unriddle, and tells him how, be- 
neath the surface of all that the eye can rest 
upon, there lies the profoundness of a most 
unsearchable latency ; aye, and should he, in 
some lofty enterprise of thought, leave this 
world and shoot afar into those tracks of 
speculation which astronomy has opened — 
should he, baffled by the mysteries which 
beset his every footstep upon earth, attempt 
an ambitious flight towards the mysteries of 
heaven, let him go, but let the justness of a 
pious and philosophical modesty go along 
with him; let him forget not, that from the 
moment his mind has taken its ascending 
way for a few little miles above the world he 
treads upon, his every sense abandons him 

Chr. Rev. 6 



122 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

but one — that number and motion and mag^ 
nitude and figure make up all the bareness 
of its elementary informations — that these 
orbs have sent him scarce another message 
than, told by their feeble glimmering upon 
his eye, the simple fact of their existence — 
that he sees not the landscape of other 
worlds, that he knows not the moral system 
of any one of them, nor athwart the long 
and trackless vacancy which lies between, 
does there fall upon his listening ear the hum 
of their mighty populations. 

But the knowledge which he cannot fetch 
up himself from the obscurity of this won- 
drous but untravelled scene, by the exercise 
of any one of his own senses, might be fetched 
to him by the testimony of a competent mes- 
senger. Conceive a native of one of these 
planetary mansions to light upon our world, 
and all we should require would be, to be 
satisfied of his credentials, that we may tack 
our faith to every point of information he 
had to offer us. With the solitary exception 
of what we have been enabled to gather by 
the instruments of astronomy, there is not 
one of his commimications about the place 
he came from, on which we possess any 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 123 

means at all of confronting him; and there- 
fore, could he only appear before us invested 
with the characters of truth, we should never 
think of any thing else than taking up the 
whole matter of his testimony just as he 
brought it to us. 

It were well had a sound philosophy 
schooled its professing disciples to the same 
kind of acquiescence in another message, 
which has actually come to the world, and 
has told us of matters still more remote from 
every power of unaided observation, and has 
been sent from a more sublime and myste- 
rious distance, even from that God of whom 
it is said, that " clouds and darkness are the 
habitation of his throne;" and treating of a 
theme so lofty and so inaccessible as the 
councils of that eternal Spirit " whose goings 
forth are of old, even from everlasting," chal- 
lenges of man that he should submit his 
every thought to the authority of this high 
communication. 0, had the philosophers of 
the day known as well as their great master, 
how to draw the vigorous landmark which 
verges the field of legitimate discovery, they 
should have seen when it is that philosophy 
becomes vain, and science is falsely so called ; 



124 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

and how it is, that when philosophy is true 
to her principles, she shuts up her faithful 
votar}^ to the Bible, and makes him willing 
to count all but loss, for the knowledge of 
Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 

But let it be well observed, that the object 
of this message is not to convey information 
to us about the state of these planetary 
regions. This is not the matter with which 
it is fraught. It is a message from the throne 
of God to this rebellious province of his 
dominions ; and the purpose of it is, to reveal 
the fearful extent of our guilt and of our 
danger, and to lay before us the overtures of 
reconciliation. "Were a similar message sent 
from the metropolis of a mighty empire to 
one of its remote and revolutionary districts, 
we should not look to it for much information 
about the state or economy of the interme- 
diate provinces. This were a departure from 
the topic on hand, though still there may 
chance to be some incidental allusions to the 
extent and resources of the whole monarchv, 
to the existence of a similar spirit of rebellion 
in other quarters of the land, or to the gen- 
eral principle of loyalty by which it was per- 
vaded. Some casual references of this kind 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 125 

may be inserted in such a proclamation, or 
they may not; and it is with this precise 
feeling of ambiguity that we open the record 
of that embassy which has been sent us from 
heaven, to see if we can gather any thing 
there, about other places of the creation, to 
meet the objections of the infidel astronomer. 
But while we pursue this object, let us have 
a care not to push the speculation beyond 
the limits of the written testimony; let us 
keep a just and a steady eye on the actual 
boundary of our knowledge, that throughout 
every distinct step of our argument we might 
preserve that chaste and unambitious spirit 
which characterizes the philosophy of him 
who explored these distant heavens, and by 
the force of his genius unravelled the secret 
of that wondrous mechanism which upholds 
them. 

The informations of the Bible upon this 
subject are of two sorts: that from which we 
confidently gather the fact, that the history of 
the redemption of our species is known in 
other and distant places of the creation ; and 
that from which we indistinctly guess at the 
fact, that the redemption itself may stretch 
beyond the limits of the world we occupy. 



126 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

And here it may shortly be adverted to^ 
that though we know little or nothing of the 
moral and theological economy of the other 
planets, we are not to infer that the beings 
who occupy these widely extended regions, 
even though not higher than we in the scale 
of understanding, know little of ours. Our 
first parents, ere they committed that act by 
which they brought themselves and their 
posterity into the need of redemption, had 
frequent and familiar intercourse with G-od. 
He walked with them in the garden of para- 
dise, and there did angels hold their habitual 
converse ; and should the same unblotted 
innocence which charmed and attracted these 
superior beings to the haunts of Eden, be 
perpetuated in every planet but our own, 
then might each of them be the scene of 
high and heavenly communications, and an 
open way for the messengers of God be kept 
up with them all, and their inhabitants be 
admitted to a share in the themes and con- 
templations of angels, and have their spirits 
exercised on those things, of which we are 
told that the angels desired to look into them ; 
and thus, as we talk of the public mind of a 
city, or the public mind of an empire, by the 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 127 

well-frequented avenues of a free and ready- 
circulation^ a public mind might be formed 
throughout the whole extent of Grod's sinless 
and intelligent creation ; and just as we often 
read of the eyes of all Europe being turned 
to the one spot where some affair of eventful 
importance is going on, there might be the 
eyes of a whole universe turned to the one 
world where rebellion against the Majesty of 
heaven had planted its standard ; and for the 
readmission of which within the circle of his 
fellowship, God, whose justice was inflexible, 
but whose mercy he had, by some plan of 
mysterious wisdom, made to rejoice over it, 
was putting forth all the might, and travail- 
ing in all the greatness of the attributes which 
belonged to him. 

But for the full understanding of this 
argument it must be remarked, that while 
in our exiled habitation, where all is darkness 
and rebellion and enmity, the creature en- 
grosses every heart — and our affections, when 
they shift at all, only w^ander from one fleet- 
ing vanity to another-^it is not so in the 
habitations of the unfallen. There every 
desire and every movement is subordinated 
to Grod. He is seen in all that is formed, 



128 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES 

and in all that is spread around them ; and 
amid the fulness of that delight with which 
they expatiate over the good and the fair of 
this wondrous universe, the animating charm 
which pervades their every contemplation is, 
that they behold, on each visible thing, the 
impress of the mind that conceived, and of 
the hand that made and that upholds it. 
Here Grod is banished from the thoughts of 
every natural man, and by a firm and con- 
stantly maintained act of usurpation, do the 
things of sense and of time wield an entire 
ascendency. There, God is all in all. They 
walk in his light. They rejoice in the beati- 
tudes of his presence. The veil is from off 
their eyes, and they see the character of 
a presiding Divinity in every scene, and 
every event to which the Divinity has given 
birth. It is this which stamps a glory and 
an importance on the whole field of their 
contemplations ; and when they see a new 
evolution in the history of created things, 
the reason they bend towards it so attentive 
an eye is, that it speaks to their under- 
standing some new evolution in the purposes 
of G-od — some new manifestation of his 
high attributes — some new and interesting 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 129 

step in the history of his sublime adminis- 
tration. 

Now, we ought to be aware how it takes 
off, not from the intrinsic weight, but from 
the actual impression of our argument, that 
this devotedness to God which reigns in other 
places of the creation, this interest in him as 
the constant and essential principle of all 
enjoyment, this concern in the untaintedness 
of his glory, this delight in the survey of his 
perfections and his doings, are what the men 
of our corrupt and darkened world cannot 
sympathize with. 

But however little we may enter into it, 
the Bible tells us by many intimations, that 
among those creatures who have not fallen 
from their allegiance, nor departed from the 
living God, God is their all; that lo^e to 
him sits enthroned in their hearts, and fills 
them with all the ecstasy of an overwhelm- 
ing affection ; that a sense of grandeur never 
so elevates their souls as when they look at 
the might and majesty of the Eternal ; that 
no field of cloudless transparency so enchants 
them by the blissfulness of its visions, as 
when at the shrine of infinite and unspotted 
holiness, they bend themselves in raptured 

6* 



130 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

adoration; that no beauty so fascinates and 
attracts them, as does that moral beauty 
which throws a softening lustre over the 
awfulness of the Grodhead: in a word, that 
the image of his character is ever present 
to their contemplations, and the unceasing 
joy of their sinless existence lies in the 
knowledge and the admiration of the Deity. 

Let us put forth an effort, and keep a 
steady hold of this consideration — for the 
deadness of our earthly imaginations makes 
an effort necessary — and we shall perceive, 
that though the world we live in were the 
alone theatre of redemption, there is some- 
thing in the redemption itself that is fitted 
to draw the eye of an arrested universe 
towards it. Surely, surely, where delight in 
G-od is the constant enjoyment, and the 
earnest, intelligent contemplation of Grod is 
the constant exercise, there is nothing in the 
whole compass of nature, or of history, that 
can so set his adoring myriads upon the 
gaze, as some new and wondrous evolution 
of the character of G-od. Now this is found 
in the plan of our redemption; nor do I 
see how, in any transaction between the 
great Father of existence, and the children 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 131 

who have sprung from him, the moral attri- 
butes of the Deity could, if I may so 
express myself, be put to so severe and so 
delicate a test. It is true, that the great 
matters of sin and of salvation fall without 
impression on the heavy ears of a listless 
and alienated world. But they who, to use 
the language of the Bible, are light in the 
Lord, look otherwise at these things. They 
see sin in all its malignity, and salvation 
in all its mysterious greatness. Aye, and it 
w^ould put them on the stretch of all their 
faculties, when they saw rebellion lifting up 
its standard against the Majesty of heaven, 
and the truth and the justice of G-od em- 
barked on the threatenings he had uttered 
against all the doers of iniquity, and the 
honors of that august throne which has the 
firm pillars of immutability to rest upon, 
linked with the fulfilment of the law that 
had come out from it; and when nothing 
else was looked for, but that God, by put- 
ting forth the power of his wrath, should 
accomplish his every denunciation, and vin- 
dicate the inflexibility of his government, 
and by one sweeping deed of vengeance 
assert, in the sight of all his creatures, the 



132 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

sovereignty which belonged to him. 0, with 
what desire must they have pondered on his 
ways, when amid the urgency of all these 
demands which looked so high and so indis- 
pensable, they saw the unfoldings of the 
attribute of mercy; and how the supreme 
Lawgiver was bending upon his guilty crea- 
tures an eye of tenderness ; and how, in his 
profound and unsearchable wisdom, he was 
devising for them some plan of restoration ; 
and how the eternal Son had to move from 
his dwelling-place in heaven to carry it 
forward, though among all the difficulties 
by which it was encompassed ; and how 
after, by the virtue of his mysterious sacri- 
fice, he had magnified the glory of every 
other perfection, he made mercy rejoice over 
them all, and threw open a way by which 
we sinful and polluted wanderers might, 
with the whole lustre of the divine char- 
acter untarnished, be readmitted into fellow- 
ship with God, and be again brought back 
within the circle of his loyal and affectionate 
family. • 

Now, the essential character of such a 
transaction, viewed as a manifestation of 
God, does not hang upon the number of 



ANGELS^ KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 133 

worlds over which this sin and this salva- 
tion may have extended. We know that 
over this one world such an economy of wis- 
dom and of mercy is instituted ; and even 
should this be the only world that is em- 
braced by it, the moral display of the God- 
head is mainly and substantially the same 
as if it reached throughout the whole of 
that habitable extent which the science of 
astronomy has made known to us. By the 
disobedience of this one world, the law was 
trampled on ; and in the business of maMng 
truth and mercy to meet, and have a har- 
monious accomplishment on the men of this 
world, the dignity of G-od was put to the 
same trial — the justice of God appeared to 
lay the same immovable barrier — the wis- 
dom of God had to clear a way through the 
same difficulties — the forgiveness of G-od had 
to find the same mysterious conveyance to 
the sinners of a solitary world, as to the 
sinners of half a universe. The extent of 
the field upon which this question was de- 
cided, has no more influence on the question 
itself, than the figure or the dimensions of 
that field of combat on which some great 
political question was fought, has on the 



134 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

importance or on the moral principles of the 
controversy that gave rise to it. This objec- 
tion about the narrowness of the theatre car- 
ries along with it all the grossness of mate- 
rialism. To the eye of spiritual and intel- 
ligent beings, it is nothing. In their view, 
the redemption of a sinful world derives its 
chief interest from the display it gives of 
the mind and purposes of the Deity; and 
should that world be but a single speck in 
the immensity of the works of God, the 
only way in which this affects their esti- 
mate of him is to magnify his loving-kind- 
ness ; who, rather than lose one solitary 
world of the myriads he has formed, would 
lavish all the riches of his beneficence and 
of his wisdom on the recovery of its guilty 
population. 

Now, though it must be admitted that 
the Bible does not speak clearly or deci- 
sively as to the proper effect of redemption 
being extended to other worlds, it speaks 
most clearly and most decisively about the 
knowledge of it being disseminated among 
other orders of created intelligence than our 
own. Eut if the contemplation of God be 
their supreme enjoyment, then the very cir- 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 135 

cumstance of our redemption "being known 
to them may invest it, even though it be 
but the redemption of one solitary world, 
with an importance as wide as the uni- 
verse itself. It may spread among the hosts 
of immensity a new illustration of the char- 
acter of Him who is all their praise, and in 
looking towards whom every energy within 
them is moved to the exercise of a deep 
and delighted adfniration. The scene of the 
transaction may be narrow in point of ma- 
terial extent, while in the transaction itself 
there may be such a moral dignity, as to 
blazon the perfections of the Godhead over 
the face of creation, and from the manifested 
glory of the Eternal, to send forth a tide 
of ecstasy, and of high gratulation, through- 
out the whole extent of his dependent prov- 
inces. 

I will not, in proof of the position that 
the history of our redemption is known in 
other and distant places of creation, and is 
matter of deep interest and feeling among 
other orders of created intelligence — I will 
not put down all the quotations which might 
be assembled together upon this argument. 
It is an impressive circumstance, that when 



136 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

Moses and Elias made a visit to our Sav- 
iour on the mount of transfiguration, and 
appeared in glory from heaven, the topic 
they brought along with them, and with 
which they were fraught, was the decease 
he was going to accomplish at Jerusalem. 
And however insipid the things of our sal- 
vation may he to an earthly understanding, 
we are made to know, that in the suffer- 
ings of Christ, and the glory which should 
follow, there is matter to attract the notice 
of celestial spirits, for these are the very 
things, says the Bible, which angels desire 
to look into. And however listlessly we, 
the dull and grovelling children of an ex- 
iled family, may feel about the perfections 
of the Godhead, and the display of those 
perfections in the economy of the gospel, it 
is intimated to us in the book of God's 
message, that the creation has its districts 
and its provinces ; and w^e accordingly read 
of thrones and dominions and principalities 
and powers; and whether these terms denote 
the separate regions of government, or the 
beings who, by a commission granted from 
the sanctuary of heaven, sit in delegated 
authority over them, even in their eyes the 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 137 

mystery of Christ stands arrayed in all the 
splendor of unsearchable riches ; for we are 
told that this mystery was revealed for the 
very intent, that nnto the principalities and 
powers in heavenly places, might be made 
known by the church the manifold wisdom 
of God. And while we, whose prospect 
reaches not beyond the narrow limits of the 
corner we occupy, look on the dealings of 
God in the world as carrying in them all 
the insignificance of a provincial transaction, 
God himself, whose eye reaches to places 
which our eye hath not seen, nor our ear 
heard of, neither hath it entered into the 
imagination of our heart to conceive, stamps 
a universality on the whole matter of the 
Christian salvation by such revelations as 
the following: That he is to gather together 
in one all things in Christ, both which are 
in heaven, and which are in earth, even in 
him ; and that at the name of Jesus every 
knee shall bow, of things in heaven and 
things in earth, and things under the earth ; 
and that by him God reconciled all things 
unto himself, whether they be things in earth, 
or things in heaven. 

"We will not say in how far some of 



138 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

these passages extend the proper effect of 
that redemption which is by Christ Jesus, 
to other quarters of the universe of God ; 
but they at least go to establish a widely 
disseminated knowledge of this transaction 
among the other orders of created intelli- 
gence. And they give us a distant glimpse 
of something more extended. They present 
a faint opening, through which may be seen 
some few traces of a wider and a nobler 
dispensation. They bring before us a dim 
transparency, on the other side of which the 
images of an obscure magnificence dazzle 
indistinctly upon the eye, and tell us, that 
in the economy of redemption there is a 
grandeur commensurate to all that is known 
of the other works and purposes of the 
Eternal. They offer us no details, and man, 
who ought not to attempt a wisdom above 
that which is written, should never, never 
put forth his hand to the drapery of that 
impenetrable curtain which Grod, in his mys- 
terious wisdom, has spread over those ways, 
of which it is but a very small portion 
that we know of them. But certain it is, 
that we know as much of them from the 
Bible; and the infidel, with all the pride 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 139 

of his boasted astronomy, knows so little of 
them from any power of observation, that the 
baseless argument of his on which we have 
dwelt so long", is overborne in the light of 
all that positive evidence which G-od has 
poured around the record of his own testi- 
mony, and even in the light of its more 
obscure and casual intimations. 

The minute and variegated details of the 
way in which this wondrous economy is 
extended, G-od has chosen to withhold from 
us; but he has oftener than once made to 
us a broad and a general announcement of 
its dignity. He does not tell us whether 
the fountain opened in the house of Judah 
for sin and for uncleanness, sends forth its 
healing streams to other worlds than our 
own. He does not tell us the extent of the 
atonement; but he tells us that the atone- 
ment itself, known as it is among the myr- 
iads of the celestial, forms the high song 
of eternity — that the Lamb who was slain 
is surrounded by the acclamations of one 
wide and universal empire — that the might 
of his wondrous achievements spreads a tide 
of gratulation over the multitudes who are 
about his throne; and there never ceases to 



140 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

ascend from the worshippers of Him who 
washed us from our sins in his blood, a voice 
loud as from numbers without number, sweet 
as from blessed voices uttering joy, when 
heaven rings jubilee, and loud hosannas fill 
the eternal regions. 

"And I beheld, and I heard the voice 
of many angels round about the throne ; and 
the number of them was ten thousand times 
ten thousand, and thousands of thousands: 
saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the 
Lamb that was slain to receive power, and 
riches, and wisdom, and strength, and glory, 
and honor, and blessing. And every crea- 
ture which is in heaven, and on the earth, 
and under the earth, and such as are in 
the sea, and all that are in them, heard I 
saying. Blessing, and honor, and glory, and 
power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and 
ever." 

A king might have the whole of his 
reign crowded with the enterprises of glory; 
and by the might of his arms, and the 
wisdom of his counsels, might win the first 
reputation among the potentates of the world ; 
and be idolized throughout all his prov 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN, 141 

mces, for the wealth and the security that he 
had spread around them — and still it is con- 
ceivahle, that by the act of a single day 
in behalf of a single family ; by some sooth- 
ing visitation of tenderness to a poor and 
solitary cottage ; by some deed of compas- 
sion, which conferred enlargement and relief 
on one despairing sufferer; by some grace- 
ful movement of sensibility at a tale of 
wretchedness ; by some noble effort of self- 
denial, in virtue of which he subdued his 
every purpose of revenge, and spread the 
mantle of a generous oblivion over the fault 
of a man who had insulted and aggrieved 
him ; above all, by an exercise of pardon 
so skilfully administered, as that instead of 
bringing him down to a state of defenco- 
lessness against the provocation of future 
injuries, it threw a deeper sacredness over 
him, and stamped a more inviolable dignity 
than ever on his person and character — why, 
my brethren, on the strength of one such 
performance, done in a single hour, and 
reaching no farther in its immediate effects 
than to one house, or to one individual, it 
is a most possible thing, that the highest 
monarch upon earth might draw such a 



142 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

lustre around him as would eclipse the 
renown of all his public achievements; and 
that such a display of magnanimity, or of 
worth, beaming from the secrecy of his 
familiar moments, might waken a more cor- 
dial veneration in every bosom, than all the 
splendor of his conspicuous history — aye, and 
that it might pass down to posterity as a 
more enduring monument of greatness, and 
raise him farther, by its moral elevation, 
above the level of ordinary praise ; and when 
he passes in review before the men of dis- 
tant ages, may this deed of modest, gentle, 
unobtrusive virtue be at all times appealed 
to, as the most sublime and touching memo- 
rial of his name. 

In like manner did the King eternal, 
immortal, and invisible, surrounded as he is 
with the splendors of a wide and everlast- 
ing monarchy, turn him to our humble 
habitation ; and the footsteps of God mani- 
fest in the flesh, have been on the narrow 
spot of ground we occupy ; and small though 
our mansion be amid the orbs and the sys- 
tems of immensity, hither hath the Eang of 
glory bent his mysterious way, and entered 
the tabernacle of men, and in the disguise 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 143 

of a servant did he sojourn for years under 
the roof which canopies our obscure and 
solitary world. Yes, it is but a twinkling 
atom in the peopled infinity of worlds that 
are around it; but look to the moral gran- 
deur of the transaction, and not to the ma- 
terial extent of the field upon which it was 
executed, and from the retirement of our 
dwelling-place there may issue forth such 
a display of the Godhead as will circulate 
the glories of his name among all his wor- 
shippers. Here sin entered. Here was the 
kind and universal beneficence of a Father 
repaid by the ingratitude of a whole fam- 
ily. Here the law of God was dishonored, 
and that too in the face of its proclaimed 
and unalterable sanctions. Here the mighty 
contest of the attributes was ended ; and 
w^hen justice put forth its demands, and 
truth called for the fulfilment of its warn- 
ings, and the immutability of God would 
not recede by a single iota from any one of 
its positions, and all the severities he had 
ever uttered against the children of ini- 
quity seemed to gather into one cloud of 
threatening vengeance on the tenement that 
held us, did the visit of the only begotten 



144 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

Son chase away all these obstacles to the 
triumph of mercy ; and humble as the tene- 
ment may be, deeply shaded in the obscu- 
rity of insignificance as it is, among the 
statelier mansions which are on every side 
of it; yet will the recall of its exiled family 
never be forgotten, and the illustration that 
has been given here of the mingled grace 
and majesty of God, will never lose its place 
among the themes and the acclamations of 
eternity. 

And here it may be remarked, that as 
the earthly king who throws a moral ag- 
grandizement around him by the act of a 
single day, finds that after its performance 
he may have the space of many years for 
gathering to himself the triumphs of an 
extended reign ; so the King who sits on 
high, and with whom one day is as a thou- 
sand years, and a thousand years as one 
day, will find, that after the period of that 
special administration is ended, by which 
this strayed world is again brought back 
within the limits of his favored creation, 
there is room enough along the mighty 
track of eternity for accumulating upon him- 
self a glory as wide and as universal as is 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 145 

the extent of his dominions. You will allow 
the most illustrious of this world's poten- 
tates to give some hour of his private his- 
tory to a deed of cottage or of domestic 
tenderness ; and every time you think of 
the interesting story, you will feel how 
sweetly and how gracefully the remembrance 
of it blends itself wil^ the fame of his 
public achievements. But still, you think 
that there would not have been room enough 
for these achievements of his, had much of 
his time been spent either among the hab- 
itations of the poor, or in the retirement of 
his own family ; and you conceive that it 
is because a single day bears so small a 
proportion to the time of his whole history, 
that he has been able to combine an inter- 
esting display of private worth with all that 
brilliancy of exhibition which has brought 
him down to posterity in the character of an 
august and mighty sovereign. 

Now apply this to the matter before us. 
Had the history of our redemption been 
confined within the limits of a single day, 
the argument that infidelity has drawn from 
the multitude of other worlds would never 
have been offered. It is true, that ours is 

Chr. Ref 7 



146 ASTHONOMICAL DTSCOUESES. 

but an insignificant portion of the territory 
of G-od; but if the attentions by which he 
has signalized it had only taken up a 
single day, this would never have occurred 
to us as forming any sensible withdraw- 
ment of the mind of the Deity from the 
concerns of this vast and universal govern- 
ment. It is the time which the plan of our 
salvation requires, that startles all those on 
whom this argument has any impression. It 
is the time taken up about this paltry 
world which they feel to be out of propor- 
tion to the number of other worlds, and to 
the immensity of the surrounding creation. 
Now, to meet this impression, I do not 
insist at present on what I have already 
brought forward, that God, whose ways are 
not as our ways, can have his eye at the 
same instant on every place, and can divide 
and diversify his attention into any number 
of distinct exercises. What I have now to 
remark is, that the infidel who urges the 
astronomical objection to the truth of Chris- 
tianity, is only looking with half an eye to 
the principle on which it rests. Carry out 
the principle, and the objection vanishes.' 
He looks abroad on the immensity of space, 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 147 

and tells us how impossible it is, that this 
narrow corner of it can be so distinguished 
by the attentions of the Deity. Why does 
he not also look abroad on the magnifi- 
cence of eternity, and perceive how the 
whole period of these peculiar attentions, 
how the whole time which elapses between 
the fall of man and the consummation of 
the scheme of his recovery, is but the 
twinkling of a moment to the mighty roll 
of innumerable ages? The whole interval 
between the time of Jesus Christ's leaving 
his Father's abode to sojourn among us, to 
that time when he shall have put all his 
enemies under his feet, and delivered up 
the kingdom to God, even his Father, that 
God may be all in all — the whole of this 
interval bears as small a proportion to the 
whole of the Almighty's reign, as this soli- 
tary world does to the universe around it, 
and an infinitely smaller proportion than 
any time, however short, which an earthly 
monarch spends on some enterprise of pri- 
vate benevolence, does to the whole walk 
of his public and recorded history. 

Why then does not the man who can 
shoot his conceptions so sublimely abroad 



148 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

over the field of an immensity that knows 
no limits — why does he not also shoot 
them forward through the vista of a suc- 
cession that ever flows without stop and 
without termination ? He has burst across 
the confines of this world's habitation in 
space, and out of the field which lies on 
the other side of it has he gathered an 
argument against the truth of revelation 
I feel that I have nothing to do but to 
burst across the confines of this world's his- 
tory in time, and out of the futurity which 
lies beyond it can I gather that which 
will blow the argument to pieces, or stamp 
upon it all the narrowness of a partial and 
mistaken calculation. The day is coming 
when the whole of this wondrous history 
shall be looked back upon by the eye of 
remembrance, and be regarded as one inci- 
dent in the extended annals of creation, 
and with all the illustration and all the 
glory it has thrown on the character of the 
Deity, will it be seen as a single step in 
the evolution of his designs ; and long as 
the time may appear, from the first act of 
our redemption to its final accomplishment, 
and close and exclusive as we may think 



ANGELS' KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. 149 

the attentions of God upon it, it will be 
found that it has left him room enough for 
all his concerns, and that on the high scale 
of eternity it is but one of those passing and 
ephemeral transactions which crowd the his- 
tory of a never-ending administration. 



150 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUHSES 



DISCOURSE V. 

ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN 
THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 

"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over 
one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just 
persons which need no repentance." Luke 15 : 7. 

I HAVE already attempted at full length 
to establish the position, that the infidel 
argument of astronomers goes to expunge a 
natural perfection from the character of Grod, 
even that wondrous property of his, by which 
he, at the same instant of time, can bend 
a close and a careful attention on a count- 
less diversity of objects, and difiuse the inti- 
macy of his power and of his presence from 
the greatest to the minutest and most insig- 
nificant of them all. I also adverted shortly 
to this other circumstance, that it went to 
impair a moral attribute of the Deity. It 
goes to impair the benevolence of his nature. 
It is saying much for the benevolence of 
God, to say that a single world, or a single 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 151 

system is not enough for it ; that it must 
have the spread of a mightier region, on 
which it may pour forth a tide of exuber- 
ancy throughout all its provinces ; that as 
far as our vision can carry us, it has strewed 
immensity with the floating receptacles of 
life, and has stretched over each of them the 
garniture of such a sky as mantles our own 
habitation ; and that even from distances 
which are far beyond the reach of human 
eye, the songs of gratitude and praise may 
now be arising to the one God, who sits 
surrounded by the regards of his one great 
and universal family. 

Now, it is saying much for the benevo- 
lence of God, to say that it sends forth these 
wide and distant emanations over the sur- 
face of a territory so ample, that the world 
we inhabit, lying imbedded as it does amidst 
so much surrounding greatness, shrinks into 
a point that to the universal eye might 
appear to be almost imperceptible. But does 
it not add to the power and to the perfec- 
tion of this universal eye, that at the very 
moment it is taking a comprehensive survey 
of the vast, it can fasten a steady and undis- 
tracted attention on each minute and sepa- 



152 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

rate portion of it ; that at the very moment 
it is looking at all worlds, it can look most 
pointedly and most intelligently to each of 
them; that at the very moment it sweeps 
the field of immensity, it can settle all the 
earnestness of its regards upon every distinct 
handbreadth of that field ; that at the very 
moment at which it embraces the totality 
of existence, it can send a most thorough 
and penetrating inspection into each of its 
details, and into every one of its endless 
diversities ? You cannot fail to perceive how 
much this adds to the power of the all-seeing 
eye. Tell me, then, if it do not add as much 
perfection to the benevolence of God, that 
while it is expatiating over the vast field 
of created things, there is not one portion of 
the field overlooked by it; that while it 
scatters blessings over the whole of an infi- 
nite range, it causes them to descend in a 
shower of plenty on every separate habita- 
tion; that while his arm is underneath and 
around about all worlds, he enters within 
the precincts of every one of them, and gives 
a care and a tenderness to each individual 
of their teeming population. 0, does not the 
God, who is said to be love, shed over this 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 153 

attribute of his its finest illustration, when, 
while he sits in the highest heaven, and 
pours out his fulness on the whole subordi- 
nate domain of nature and of providence, 
he bows a pitying regard on the very hum- 
blest of his children, and sends his reviving 
Spirit into every heart, and cheers by his 
presence every home, and provides for the 
wants of every family, and watches every 
sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of 
every sufferer; and while by his wondrous 
mind the weight of universal government is 
borne, 0, is it not more wondrous and more 
excellent still, that he feels for every sorrow, 
and has an ear open to every prayer ? 

"It doth not yet appear what we shall 
be," says the apostle John, "but we know 
that when he shall appear, we shall be like 
him, for we shall see him as he is." It is 
the present lot of the angels, that they behold 
the face of our Pather in heaven, and it 
would seem as if the effect of this was to 
form and to perpetuate in them the moral 
likeness of himself, and that they reflect 
back upon him his own image, and that thus 
a diffused resemblance to the Godhead is 
kept up among all those adoring worship- 



154 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUIISES. 

pers who live in the near and rejoicing con- 
templation of the Grodhead. Mark then how 
that peculiar and endearing feature in the 
goodness of the Deity, which we have just 
now adverted to — mark how beauteously it 
is reflected downward upon us in the re- 
vealed attitude of angels. From the high 
eminences of heaven, are they bending a 
wakeful regard over the men of this sinful 
world; and the repentance of every one of 
them spreads a joy and a high gratulation 
throughout all its dwelling-places. Put this 
trait of the angelic character into contrast 
with the dark and lowering spirit of an infi- 
del. He is told of the multitude of other 
worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence 
in the conception, and he is seduced by an 
elevation which he cannot carry, and from 
this airy summit does he look down on the 
insignificance of the world we occupy, and 
pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits 
and of those attentions which we read of in 
the New Testament. He is unable to wing 
his upward way along the scale, either of 
moral or of natural perfection; and when 
the wonderful extent of the field is made 
known to him, over which the wealth of the 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 155 

Divinity is lavished — there he stops and wil- 
ders, and altogether misses this essential per- 
ception, that the power and perfection of 
the Divinity are not more displayed by the 
mere magnitude of the field, than they are 
by that minute and exquisite filling up, 
which leaves not its smallest portions neg- 
lected, but which imprints the fulness of the 
Godhead upon every one of them; and 
proves, by every flower of the pathless desert, 
as well as by every orb of immensity, how 
this unsearchable Being can care for all and 
provide for all, and throned in mystery too 
high for us, can throughout every instant 
of time, keep his attentive eye on every 
separate thing that he has formed, and by 
an act of his thoughtful and presiding intel- 
ligence, can constantly embrace all. 

But God, compassed about as he is with 
light inaccessible and full of glory, lies so 
hidden from the ken and conception of all 
our faculties, that the spirit of man sinks 
exhausted by its attempts to comprehend 
him. Could the image of the Supreme be 
placed direct before the eye of the mind, that 
flood of splendor which is ever issuing from 
him on all who have the privilege of behold- 



156 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

ing, would not only dazzle, but overpower 
us. And therefore it is that I bid you look 
to the reflection of that image, and thus to 
take a view of its mitigated glories, and to 
gather the lineaments of the Godhead in the 
face of those righteous angels, who have 
never thrown away from them the resem- 
blance in which they were created; and 
unable as you are to support the grace and 
the majesty of that countenance, before which 
the sons and the prophets of other days fell, 
and became as dead men, let us, before we 
bring this argument to a close, borrow one 
lesson of Him who sitteth on the throne, 
from the aspect and the revealed doings of 
those who are surrounding it. 

The infidel, then, as he widens the field 
of his contemplations, would sufier its every 
separate object to die away into forgetful- 
ness ; these angels, expatiating as they do 
over the range of a loftier universality, are 
represented as all awake to the history of 
each of its distinct and subordinate prov- 
inces. The infidel, with his mind afloat 
among suns and among systems, can find 
no place in his already occupied regards for 
that humble planet which lodges and accom- 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 157 

modates our species ; the angels, standing 
on a loftier summit, and with a mightier 
prospect of creation before them, are yet 
represented as looking down on this single 
world, and attentively marking the every 
feeling and the every demand of all its fam- 
ilies. The infidel, by sinking us down to 
an unnoticeable minuteness, would lose sight 
of our dwelling-place altogether, and spread 
a darkening shroud of oblivion over all the 
concerns and all the interests of men; but 
the angels will not so abandon us ; and un- 
dazzled by the whole surpassing grandeur 
of that scenery which is around them, are 
they revealed as directing all the fulness of 
their regard to this our habitation, and cast- 
ing a longing and a benignant eye on our- 
selves and on our children. The infidel will 
tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and 
the number of which outstrips the arithmetic 
of the human understanding, and then with 
the hardness of an unfeeling calculation, will 
he consign the one we occupy, with all its 
guilty generations, to despair. But He who 
counts the number of the stars, is set 
forth to us as looking at every inhabitant 
among the millions of our species, and by 



158 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

the word of the gospel beckoning to him with 
the hand of invitation, and on the very first 
step of his return, as moving towards him 
with all the eagerness of the prodigal's father, 
to receive him hack again into that pres- 
ence from which he had wandered. And 
as to this world, in favor of which the 
scowling infidel will not permit one solitary 
movement, all heaven is represented as in 
a stir about its restoration; and there can- 
not a single son, or a single daughter, be 
recalled from sin unto righteousness^ without 
an acclamation of joy among the hosts of 
paradise. Aye, and I can say it of the 
humblest and the unworthiest of you all, 
that the eye of angels is upon him, and that 
his repentance would, at this moment, send 
forth a wave of delighted sensibility through- 
out the mighty throng of their innumerable 
legions. 

Now, the single question I have to ask, 
is. On which of the two sides of this con- 
trast do we see most of the impress of 
heaven ? "Which of the two would be most 
glorifying to G-od? Which of them carries 
upon it most of that evidence which lies in 
its having a celestial character ? For if it 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 159 

be the side of the infidel, then must all our 
hopes expire with the ratifying of that fatal 
sentence by which the world is doomed, 
through its insignificancy, to perpetual exclu- 
sion from the attentions of the Godhead. I 
have long been knocking at the door of your 
understanding, and have tried to find an 
admittance to it for many an argument. I 
now make my appeal to the sensibilities of 
your heart ; and tell me, to whom does the 
moral feeling within it yield its readiest testi- 
mony: to the infidel who would make this 
world of ours vanish away into abandon- 
ment; or to those angels, who ring through- 
out all their mansions the hosannas of joy 
over every one individual of its repentant 
population ? 

And here I cann?ot omit to take advan- 
tage of that opening with which our Saviour 
has furnished us by the parables of this chap- 
ter, and admits us into a familiar view of 
that principle on which the inhabitants of 
heaven are so aw^ake to the deliverance and 
the restoration of our species. To illustrate 
the difference in the reach of knowledge and 
of affection between a man and an angel, 
let us think of the difference of reach be- 



160 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

tween one man and another. You may often 
witness a man who feels neither tenderness 
nor care beyond the precincts of his own 
family, but who, on the strength of those 
instinctive fondnesses which nature has im- 
planted in his bosom, may earn the character 
of an amiable father, or a kind husband, or 
a bright example of all that is soft and 
endearing in the relations of domestic society. 
Now conceive him, in addition to all this, 
to carry his affections abroad, without at the 
same time any abatement of their intensity 
towards the objects which are at home — 
that stepping across the limits of the house 
he occupies, he takes an interest in the fam- 
ilies which are near him — that he lends his 
services to the town or the district wherein 
he is placed, and gives up a portion of his 
time to the thoughtful labors of a humane and 
public-spirited citizen. By this enlargement 
in the sphere of his attention, he has ex- 
tended his reach ; and provided he has not 
done so at the expense of that regard which 
is due to his family — a thing which, cramped 
and confined as we are, we are very apt in 
the exercise of our humble faculties to do — 
I put it to you, whether by extending the 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 161 

reach of his views and his affections, he has 
not extended his worth and his moral respect- 
ability along with it ? 

But I can conceive a still further enlarge- 
ment. I can figure to myself a man whose 
wakeful sympathy overflows the field of his 
own immediate neighborhood — to whom the 
name of country comes with all the omnipo- 
tence of a charm upon his heart, and with 
all the urgency of a most righteous and resist- 
less claim upon his services — who never hears 
the name of Britain sounded in his ears, but 
it stirs up all his enthusiasm in behalf of 
the worth and the welfare of his people — 
who gives himself up, with all the devoted- 
ness of a passion, to the best and the purest 
objects of patriotism — and who, spurning 
away from him the vulgarities of party am- 
bition, separates his life and his labors to the 
fine pursuit of augmenting the science, or 
the virtue, or the substantial prosperity of 
his nation. 0, could such a man retain all 
the tenderness, and fulfil all the duties which 
home and which neighborhood require of 
him, and at the same time expatiate in the 
might of his untired faculties on so wide a 
field of benevolent contemplation, would not 



162 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

this extension of reach place him still higher 
than before, on the scale both of moral and 
intellectual gradation, and give him a still 
brighter and more enduring name in the 
records of human excellence ? 

And lastly, I can conceive a still loftier 
flight of humanity: a man, the aspiring of 
whose heart for the good of man knows no 
limitations — whose longings, and whose con- 
ceptions on this subject overleap all the bar- 
riers of geography — who, looking on himself 
as a brother of the species, links every spare 
energy which belongs to him with the cause 
of its amelioration — who can embrace within 
the grasp of his ample desires the whole 
family of mankind — and who, in obedience to 
a heaven-born movement of principle within 
him, separates himself to some big and busy 
enterprise, which is to tell on the moral des- 
tinies of the world. 0, could such a man 
mix up the softenings of private virtue with 
the habit of so sublime a comprehension — 
if amid those magnificent darings of thought, 
and of performance, the mildness of his be- 
nignant eye could still continue to cheer the 
retreat of his family, and to spread the 
charm and the sacredness of piety among 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 163 

all its members — could he even mingle him- 
self in all the gentleness of a soothed and 
smiling heart, with the playfulness of his 
children, and also find strength to shed the 
blessings of his presence and his counsel 
over the vicinity around him ; O, would not 
the combination of so much grace with so 
much loftiness only serve the more to aggran- 
dize him ? Would not the one ingredient 
of a character so rare, go to illustrate and 
to magnify the other ? And would not you 
pronounce him to be the fairest specimen of 
our nature, who could so call out all your 
tenderness, while he challenged and com- 
pelled all your veneration ? 

Nor can I proceed, at this point of my 
argument, without adverting to the way in 
which this last and this largest style of 
benevolence is exemplified in our own coun- 
try, where the spirit of the gospel has given 
to many of its enlightened disciples the im- 
pulse of such a philanthropy as carries 
abroad their wishes and their endeavors to 
the very outskirts of human population — a 
philanthropy, of which if you asked the 
extent or the boundary of its field, we should 
answer, in the language of inspiration, that 



164 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

the field is the world — a philanthropy which 
overlooks all the distinctions of cast and of 
color, and spreads its ample regards over 
the whole brotherhood of the species — a 
philanthropy which attaches itself to man 
in the general, to man throughout all his 
varieties, to man as the partaker of one com- 
mon nature, and who, in whatever clime or 
latitude you may meet with him, is found 
to breathe the same sympathies, and to pos- 
sess the same high capabilities both of bliss 
and of improvement. It is true, that upon 
this subject there is often a loose and un- 
settled magnificence of thought, which is 
fruitful of nothing but empty speculation. 
But the men to whom I allude have not 
imaged the enterprise in the form of a thing 
unknown. They have given it a local habi- 
tation. They have bodied it forth in deed 
and in accomplishment. They have turned 
the dream into a reality. In them the 
power of a lofty generalization meets with 
its happiest attemperament, in the principle 
and perseverance and all the chastening and 
subduing virtues of the New Testament. 
And were I in search of that fine union of 
grace and of greatness which I have now 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 165 

been insisting on, and in virtue of which 
the enlightened Christian can at once find 
room in his bosom for the concerns of uni- 
versal humanity, and for the play of kind- 
liness towards every individual he meets 
with, I could nowhere more readily expect 
to find it than with the worthies of our 
own land — the Howard of a former genera- 
tion, who paced it over Europe in quest of 
the unseen wretchedness which abounds in 
it; or in such men of our present genera- 
tion as Wilberforce, who lifted his unwea- 
ried voice against the biggest outrage ever 
practised on our nature, till he wrought its 
extermination; and Clarkson, who plied his 
assiduous task at rearing the materials of 
its impressive history, and at length carried, 
for this righteous cause, the mind of parlia- 
ment ; and Carey, froni whose hand the 
generations of the East are now receiving 
the elements of their moral renovation ; and 
in fine, those elevated and devoted men 
who count not their lives dear unto them, 
but going forth every year from the island 
of our habitation, carrying the message of 
Heaven over the face of the world, and in the 
front of the severest obloquy, are now labor- 



166 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

ing in the remotest lands, and are reclaim- 
ing another and another portion from the 
wastes of dark and fallen humanity, and 
are widening the domains of gospel light 
and gospel principle among them, and are 
spreading a moral beauty around the every 
spot on which they pitch their lowly taber- 
nacle, and are at length compelling even 
the eye and the testimony of gainsayers by 
the success of their noble enterprise, and 
are forcing the exclamation of delighted sur- 
prise from the charmed and the arrested 
traveller, as he looks at the softening tints 
which they are now spreading over the wil- 
derness, and as he hears the sound of the 
chapel bell, and as in those haunts where, 
at the distance of half a generation, savages 
would have scowled upon his path, he regales 
himself with the hum of missionary schools, 
and the lovely spectacle of peaceful and 
Christian villages. 

Such then is the benevolence, at once 
so gentle and so lofty, of those men who, 
sanctified by the faith that is in Jesus, have 
had their hearts visited from heaven by a 
beam of warmth and of sacredness. What 
then, I should like to know, is the benevo- 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 167 

lence of the place from whence such an 
influence coineth ? How wide is the com- 
pass of this virtue there, and how exquisite 
is the feeling of its tenderness, and how 
pure and how fervent are its aspirings among 
those unfallen beings who have no dark- 
ness, and no encumbering weight of corrup- 
tion to strive against ? Angels have a migh- 
tier reach of contemplation. Angels can look 
upon this world, and all which it inherits, 
as the part of a larger family. Angels were 
in the full exercise of their powers even at 
the first infancy of our species, and shared 
in the gratulations of that period, when at 
the birth of humanity all intelligent nature 
felt a gladdening impulse, and the morning 
stars sung together for joy. They loved us 
even with the love which a family on earth 
bears to a younger sister; and the very 
childhood of our tinier faculties did only 
serve the more to endear us to them ; and 
though born at a later hour in the history 
of creation, did they regard us as heirs of 
the same destiny with themselves, to rise 
along with them in the scale of moral ele- 
vation, to bow at the same footstool, and 
to partake in those high dispensations of a 



168 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

parent's kindness and a parent's care, which 
are ever emanating from the throne of the 
Eternal on all the members of a duteous 
and affectionate family. Take the reach of 
an angel's mind, but at the same time, take 
the seraphic fervor of an angel's benevolence 
along with it : how from the eminence on 
which he stands he may have an eye upon 
many worlds, and a remembrance upon the 
origin and the successive concerns of every 
one of them — how he may feel the full force 
of a most affecting relationship with the 
habitants of each, as the offspring of one 
common Father ; and though it be both the 
effect and the evidence of our depravity, 
that we cannot sympathize with these pure 
and generous ardors of a celestial spirit — 
how it may consist with the lofty compre- 
hension, and the ever-breathing love of an 
angel, that he can both shoot his benevo- 
lence abroad over a mighty expanse of 
planets and of systems, and lavish a flood 
of tenderness on each individual of their 
teeming population. 

Keep all this in view, and you cannot 
fail to perceive how the principle, so finely 
and so copiously illustrated in this chapter, 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 169 

may be brought to meet the infidelity we 
have thus long been employed in combating. 
It was nature, and the experience of every 
bosom will affirm it — it was nature in the 
shepherd to leave the ninety and nine of 
his flock forgotten and alone in the wilder- 
ness, and betaking himself to the moun- 
tains, to give all his labor and all his con- 
cern to the pursuit of one solitary wanderer. 
It was nature — and we are told in the pas- 
sage before us, that it is such a portion of 
nature as ^belongs not merely to men, but 
to angels — when the woman, Vv^ith her mind 
in a state of listlessness as to the nine pieces 
of silver that were in secure custody, turned 
the whole force of her anxiety to the one 
piece which she had lost, and for which 
she had to light a candle, and to sweep the 
house, and to search diligently until she 
found it. It was nature in her to rejoice 
more over that piece, than over all the rest 
of them, and to tell it abroad among friends 
and neighbors, that they might rejoice along 
with her ; aye, and sadly effaced as human- 
ity is, in all her original lineaments, this 
is a part of our nature, the very movements 
of which are experienced in heaven, " where 

Chr. Rev 8 



170 ASTEONOMICAL DISGOUHSES. 

there is more joy over one sinner that repent- 
eth, than over ninety and nine just persons 
who need no repentance." For any thing 
I know, the very planet that rolls in the 
immensity around me, may be a land of 
righteousness, and be a member of the house- 
hold of God, and have her secure dwelling- 
place within that ample limit which em- 
braces his great and universal family. But 
I know at least of one wanderer, and how 
wofully she has strayed from peace and from 
purity; and how, in dreary alienation from 
Him who made her, she has bewildered her- 
self among those many devious tracks which 
have carried her afar from the path of 
immortality; and how sadly tarnished all 
those .beauties and felicities are which prom- 
ised, on that morning of her existence when 
G-od looked on her and saw that all was 
very good, which promised so richly to bless 
and to adorn her; and how in the eye of 
the whole unfallen creation, she has re- 
nounced all this goodliness, and is fast depart- 
ing away from them into guilt and wretch- 
ness and shame. 0, if there be any truth 
in this chapter, and any sweet or touching 
nature m the principle which runs through- 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 171 

out all his parables, let us cease to wonder, 
though they who surround the throne of love 
should be looking so intently towards us ; 
or though, in the way by which they have 
singled us out, all the other orbs of space 
should, for one short season on the scale of 
eternity, appear to be forgotten; or though, 
for every step of her recovery, and for every 
individual who is rendered back again to the 
fold from which he was separated, another 
and another message of triumph should be 
made to circulate among the hosts of para- 
dise; or though, lost as we are, and sunk 
in depravity as we are, all the sympathies 
of heaven should now be awake on the 
enterprise of Him who has travailed, in the 
greatness of his strength, to seek and to 
save us. 

And here I cannot but remark how fine 
a harmony there is between the law of sym- 
pathetic nature in heaven, and the most 
touching exhibitions of it on the face of our 
world. "When one of a numerous household 
droops under the power of disease, is not 
that the one to whom all the tenderness is 
turned, and who, in a manner, monopolizes 
the inquiries of his neighborhood and the 



172 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

care of his family? When the sighing of 
the midnight storm sends a dismal forebod- 
ing into the mother's heart, to whom of all 
her offspring, I would ask, are her thoughts 
and her anxieties then wandering? Is it 
not to her sailor boy, whom her fancy has 
placed amid the rude and angry surges of 
the ocean ? Does not this, the hour of his 
apprehended danger, concentrate upon him 
the whole force of her wakeful meditations? 
And does not he engross, for a season, her 
every sensibility and her every prayer ? We 
sometimes hear of shipwrecked passengers 
thrown upon a barbarous shore, and seized 
upon by its prowling inhabitants, and hur- 
ried away through the tracks of a dreary 
and unknown wilderness, and sold into cap- 
tivity, and loaded with the fetters of irre- 
coverable bondage ; and who, stripped of every 
other liberty but the liberty of thought, feel 
even this to be another ingredient of wretch- 
edness : for what can they think of but home ? 
and as all its kind and tender imagery comes 
upon their remembrance, how can they think 
of it but in the bitterness of despair? 0, 
tell me, when the fame of all this disaster 
reaches his family, who is the member of 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 173 

it to whom is directed the full tide of its 
griefs and of its sympathies? Who is it 
that, for weeks and for months, usurps their 
every feeling, and calls out their largest 
sacrifices, and sets them to the busiest expe- 
dients for getting him back again ? Who is 
it that makes them forgetful of themselves 
and of all around them ; and tell me if you 
can assign a limit to the pains and the ex- 
ertions and the surrenders which afflicted 
parents and weeping sisters would make to 
seek and to save him ? 

Now conceive, as we are warranted to 
do by the parables of this chapter, the prin- 
ciple of all these earthly exhibitions to be 
in full operation around the throne of God. 
Conceive the universe to be one secure and 
rejoicing family, and that this alienated world 
is the only strayed, or only captive member 
belonging to it, and we shall cease to won- 
der, that from the first period of the captivity 
of our species, down to the consummation 
of their history in time^ there should be such 
a movement in heaven; or that angels should 
so often have sped their commissioned way 
on the errand of our recovery; or that the 
Son of Grod should have bowed himself down 



174 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

to the burden of our mysterious atonement; 
or that the Spirit of God should now, by 
the busy variety of his all-powerful influ- 
ences, be carrying forward that dispensation 
of grace which is to make us meet for read- 
mittance into the mansions of the celestial. 
Only think of love as the reigning principle 
there — of love as sending forth its energies 
and aspirations to the quarter where its object 
is most in danger of being for ever lost to 
it — of love as called forth by this single 
circumstance to its uttermost exertion, and 
the most exquisite feeling of its tenderness, 
and then shall we come to a distinct and 
familiar explanation of this whole mystery. 
Nor shall we resist, by our incredulity, the 
gospel message any longer, though it tells 
us that throughout the whole of this world's 
history, long in our eyes, but only a little 
month in the higS periods of immortality, 
so much of the vigilance, and so much of 
the earnestness of heaven should have been 
expended on the recovery of its guilty popu- 
lation. 

There is another touching trait of nature 
which goes finely to heighten this prin- 
ciple, and still more forcibly to demonstrate 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 175 

its application to our present argument. So 
long as the dying child of David was alive, 
he was kept on the stretch of anxiety and 
of suffering with regard to it. When it 
expired, he arose and comforted himself. 
This narrative of king David is in harmony 
with all that we experience of our own 
movements and our own sensibilities. It is 
the power of uncertainty which gives them 
so active and so interesting a play in our 
bosoms, and which heightens all our re- 
gards to a tenfold pitch of feeling and of 
exercise, and which fixes down our watch- 
fulness upon our infant's dying-bed, and 
which keeps us so painfully alive to every 
turn and to every symptom in the progress 
of its malady, and which draws out all 
our affections for it to a degree of intensity 
that is quite unutterable, and which urges 
us on to ply our every effort and our every 
expedient, till hope withdraw its lingering 
beam, or till death shut the eyes of our 
beloved in the slumber of its long and its 
last repose. 

I know not who of you have your names 
written in the book of life ; nor can I tell 
if this be known to the angels which are 



176 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

in heaven. "While in the land of living 
men, you are under the power and applica- 
tion of a remedy which, if taken as the 
gospel prescribes, will renovate the soul, and 
altogether prepare it for the bloom and the 
vigor of immortality. Wonder not then, that 
with this principle of uncertainty in such 
full operation, ministers should feel for you, 
or angels should feel for you; or all the 
sensibilities of heaven should be awake upon 
the symptoms of your grace and reforma- 
tion ; or the eyes of those who stand upon 
the high eminences of the celestial world, 
should be so earnestly fixed on the every 
footstep and new evolution of your moral 
history. Such a consideration as this should 
do something more than silence the infi- 
del objection. It should give a practical 
effect to the calls of repentance. How 
will it go to aggravate the whole guilt of 
our impenitency, should we stand out 
against the power and the tenderness of 
these manifold applications : the voice of 
a beseeching God upon us — the word of 
salvation at our very door — the free offer 
of strength and of acceptance sounded in 
our hearing — the Spirit in readiness with 



ANGELS' SYMPATHY WITH MAN. 177 

his agency to meet our every desire and 
our every inquiry — angels beckoning us to 
their company — and the very first move- 
ments of our awakened conscience draw- 
ing upon us all their regards and all their 
earnestness. 



8^ 



178 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES, 



DISCOURSE VI. 

ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OYER MAN, 
AMONG THE HIGHER ORDERS OF INTELLIGENCE. 

"And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a 
show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." Col. 2 :15. 

Though these astronomical discourses be 
now drawing to a close, it is not because I 
feel that much more might not be said on 
the subject of them, both in the way of argu- 
ment and of illustration. The whole of the 
infidel difficulty proceeds upon the assump- 
tion, that the exclusive bearing of Chris- 
tianity is upon the people of our earth ; that 
this solitary planet is in no way implicated 
with the concerns of a wider dispensation; 
that the revelation we have of the dealings 
of God, in this district of his empire, does 
not suit and subordinate itself to a system 
of moral administration as extended as is the 
whole of his monarchy. Or in other words, 
because infidels have not access to the whole 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 179 

truth, will they refuse a part of it, however 
well attested or well accredited it may be ; 
because a mantle of deep obscurity rests on 
the government of Grod, when taken in all 
its eternity and all its entireness, will they 
shut their eyes against that allowance of 
light which has been made to pass downward 
upon our world from time to time, through 
so many partial unfoldings ; and till they 
are made to know the share which other 
planets have in these communications ' of 
mercy, will they turn them away from the 
actual message which has come to their own 
door, and will neither examine its creden- 
tials, nor be alarmed by its warnings, nor be 
won by the tenderness of its invitations. 

On that day when the secrets of all hearts 
shall be revealed, there will be found such 
a wilful duplicity and darkening of the mind 
in the whole of this proceeding, as shall 
bring down upon it the burden of a right- 
eous condemnation. But even now does it 
lie open to the rebuke of philosophy, when 
the soundness and the consistency of her prin- 
ciples are brought faithfully to bear upon it. 
Were the character of modern science rightly 
understood, it would be seen that the very 



180 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

thing Wiiicli gave such strength and sure- 
ness to all her conclusions, was that humility 
of spirit which helonged to her. She pro- 
mulgates all that is positively known, but 
she maintains the strictest silence and mod- 
esty about all that is unknown. She thank- 
fully accepts of evidence wherever it can 
be found ; nor does she spurn away from 
her the very humblest contribution of such 
doctrine as can be witnessed by human obser- 
vation, or can be attested by human verac- 
ity. But with all this, she can hold out 
most sternly against that power of eloquence 
and fancy which often throws so bewitch- 
ing a charm over the plausibilities of ingen- 
ious speculation. Truth is the alone idol 
of her reverence; and did she at all times 
keep by her attachments, nor throw them 
away when theology submitted to her cog- 
nizance its demonstrations and its claims, 
we should not despair of witnessing as great 
a revolution in those prevailing habitudes oi 
thought which obtain throughout our literary 
establishments on the subject of Christianity, 
as that which has actually taken place in 
the philosophy of external nature. This is 
the first field on which have been success- 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 181 

fully practised the experimental lessons of 
Bacon; and they who are conversant with 
these matters know how great and how 
general a uniformity of doctrine now prevails 
in the sciences of astronomy and mechanics 
and chemistry, and almost all the other 
departments in the history and philosophy 
of matter. But this uniformity stands strik- 
ingly contrasted with the diversity of our 
moral systems, with the restless fluctuations 
both of language and of sentiment which are 
taking place in the philosophy of mind, with 
the palpable fact that every new course of 
instruction upon this subject has some new 
articles, or some new explanations to pecul- 
iarize it; and all this is to be attributed, 
not to the progress of the science — not to a 
growing, but to an alternating movement — 
not to its perpetual additions, but to its per- 
petual vibrations. 

I mean not to assert the futility of moral 
science, or to deny her importance, or to 
insist on the utter hopelessness of her' ad- 
vancement. The Baconian method will not 
probably push forward her discoveries with 
such a rapidity, or to such an extent, as 
many of her sanguine disciples have antici- 



182 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

pated. But if the spirit and the maxims of 
this philosophy were at all times proceeded 
upon, it would certainly check that rashness 
and variety of excogitation, in virtue of which 
it may almost be said, that every new course 
presents us with a new system, and that 
every new teacher has some singularity or 
other to characterize him. She may be able 
to make out an exact transcript of the phe- 
nomena of mind, and in so doing she yields 
a most important contribution to the stock 
of human acquirements. But when she at- 
tempts to grope her darkling way through 
the counsels of the Deity, and the futurities 
of his administration — when, without one 
passing acknowledgment to the embassy 
which professes to have come from him, or 
to the facts and to the testimonies by which 
it has so illustriously been vindicated, she 
launches forth her own speculations on the 
character of Grod, and the destiny of man — 
when, though this be a subject on which 
neither the recollections of history, nor the 
ephemeral experience of any single life, can 
furnish one observation to enlighten her, she 
will nevertheless utter her own plausibilities, 
not merely with a contemptuous neglect of 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 183 

the Bible, but in direct opposition to it — then 
it is high time to remind her of the differ- 
ence between the reverie of him who has not 
seen Grod, and the well-accredited declaration 
of Him who was in the beginning with God, 
and was Grod ; and to tell her that this, so 
far from being the argument of an ignoble 
fanaticism, is in harmony with the very ar- 
gument upon which the science of experi- 
ment has been reared, and by which it has 
been at length delivered from the influence 
of theory, and purified of all its vain and 
visionary splendors. 

In my last discourses I have attempted to 
collect from the records of God's actual com- 
munication to the world, such traces of rela- 
tionship between other orders of being and 
the great family of mankind, as serve to 
prove that Christianity is not so paltry and 
provincial a system as Infidelity presumes it 
to be. And as I said before, I have not ex- 
hausted all that may legitimately be derived 
upon this subject from the informations of 
Scripture. I have adverted, it is true, to the 
knowledge of our moral history, which ob- 
tains throughout other provincfes of the intel- 
ligent creation. I have asserted the univer- 



184 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

sal importance which this may confer on the 
transactions even of one planet, in as much 
as it may spread an honorable display of the 
Godhead among all the mansions of infinity, 
I have attempted to expatiate on the argu- 
ment, that an event, little in itself, may be 
so pregnant with character as to furnish all 
the worshippers of heaven with a theme of 
praise for eternity. I have stated that noth- 
ing is of magnitude in their eyes, but that 
which serves to endear to thein the Father 
of their spirits, or to shed a lustre over the 
glory of his incomprehensible attributes ; and 
that thus, from the redemption even of our 
solitary species, there may go forth such an 
exhibition of the Deity as shall bear the 
triumphs of his name to the very outskirts 
of the universe. 

I have farther adverted to another distinct 
scriptural intimation, that the state of fallen 
man was not only matter of knowledge to 
other orders of creation, but was also matter 
of deep regret and affectionate sympathy; 
that agreeably to such laws of sympathy as 
are most familiar even to human observation, 
the very wretchedness of our condition was 
fitted to concentrate upon us the feelings 



ANGELIC CONTESTS EOH MAN. 185 

and the attentions and the services of the 
celestial, to single us out for a time to the 
gaze of their most earnest and unceasing con- 
templation, to draw forth all that was kind 
and all that was tender within them, and 
just in proportion to the need and to the help- 
lessness of us miserable exiles from the fam- 
ily of G-od, to multiply upon us the regards, 
and call out in our behalf the fond and eager 
exertions of those who had never wandered 
away from him. This appears from the Bible 
to be the style of that benevolence which 
glows and which circulates around the throne 
of heaven. It is the very benevolence which 
emanates from the throne itself, and the at- 
tentions of which have for so many thousand 
years signalized the inhabitants of our world. 
This may look a long period for so paltry a 
world. But how have Infidels come to their 
conception that our world is so paltry ? By 
looking abroad over the countless systems of 
immensity. But why then have they missed 
the conception, that the time of those pecul- 
iar visitations, which they look upon as so 
disproportionate to the magnitude of this 
earth, is just as evanescent as the earth itself 
is insignificant ? Why look they not abroad 



186 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES 

on the countless generations of eternity, and 
thus come back to the conclusion, that, after 
all, the redemption of our species is but an 
ephemeral doing in the history of an intelli- 
gent nature — that it leaves the Author of it 
room for all the accomplishments of a wise 
and equal administration; and not to men- 
tion that even during the progress of it, it 
withdraws not a single thought or a single 
energy of his from other fields of creation, 
that there remains time enough to him for 
carrying round the visitations of as striking 
and as peculiar a tenderness over the whole 
extent of his great and universal monarchy ? 
It might serve still further to incorporate 
the concerns of our planet with the general 
history of moral and intelligent beings, to 
state, not merely the knowledge which they 
take of us, and not merely the compassionate 
anxiety which they feel for us, but to state 
the importance derived to our world from its 
being the actual theatre of a keen and am- 
bitious contest among the upper orders of 
creation. You know that how, for the pos- 
session of a very small and insulated terri- 
tory, the mightiest empires of the world 
have put forth all their resources; and on 



ANGELIC CONTESTS EOH MAN. 187 

some field of mustering competition have 
monarchs met, and embarked for victory 
all the pride of a country's talent, and all 
the flower and strength of a country's pop- 
ulation. The solitary island around which 
so many fleets are hovering, and on the 
shores of which so many armed men are 
descending, as to an arena of hostility, may 
well wonder at its own unlooked-for esti- 
mation. But other principles are animating 
the battle, and the glory of nations is at 
stake, and a much higher result is in the 
contemplation of each party, than the gain 
of so humble an acquirement as the primary 
object of the war ; and honor, dearer to many 
a bosom than existence, is now the interest 
on which so much blood and so much treas- 
ure is expended, and the stirring spirit of 
emulation has now got hold of the combat- 
ants; and thus, amid all the insignificancy 
which attaches to the material origin of the 
contest, do both the eagerness and the ex- 
tent of it receive, from the constitution of 
our nature, their most full and adequate 
explanation. 

Now, if this be also the principle of higher 
natures — if, on the one hand, God be jealous 



188 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

of his honor, and on the other, there be proud 
and exalted spirits who scowl defiance at 
him and his monarchy — if, on the side of 
heaven, there be an angelic host rallying 
around the standard of loyalty, who fly with 
alacrity at the bidding of the Almighty, who 
are devoted to his glory, and feel a rejoicing 
interest in the evolution of his counsels; 
and if, on the side of hell, there be a sullen 
front of resistance, a hate and malice inex- 
tinguishable, an unequalled daring of revenge 
to baffle the wisdom of the Eternal, and to 
arrest the hand and to defeat the purposes of 
Omnipotence — ^then let the material prize of 
victory be insignificant as it may, it is the 
victory in itself which upholds the impulse of 
this keen and stimulated rivalry. If, by the 
sagacity of one infernal mind, a single planet 
has been seduced from its allegiance, and 
been brought under the ascendency of him 
who is called in Scripture, "the god of this 
world," and if the errand on which our Re- 
deemer came, was to destroy the works of 
the devil, then let this planet have all the 
littleness which astronomy has assigned to 
it — call it what it is, one of the smaller islets 
which float on the ocean of vacancy — it has 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOU MAN. 189 

become the theatre of such a competition as 
may have all the desires and all the energies 
of a divided universe embarked upon it. It 
involves in it other objects than the single 
recovery of our species. It decides higher 
questions. It stands linked with the su- 
premacy of Grod, and will at length demon- 
strate the way in which he inflicts chastise- 
ment and overthrow upon all his enemies. I 
know not if our rebellious world be the only 
strong-hold which Satan is possessed of, or if 
it be but the single post of an extended war- 
fare, that is now going on between the pow- 
ers of light and of darkness. But be it the 
one or the other, the parties are in array, and 
the spirit of the contest is in full energy, and 
the honor of mighty combatants is at stake ; 
and let us cease to wonder that our humble 
residence has been made the theatre of so 
busy an operation, or that the ambition of 
loftier natures has here put forth all its de- 
sire and all its strenuousness. 

This unfolds to us another of those high 
and extensive bearings which the moral his- 
tory of our globe may have on the system 
of Grod's universal administration. "Were an 
enemy to touch the shore of this high-minded 



190 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

country, and to occupy so much as one of 
the humblest of its villages, and there to se- 
duce the natives from their loyalty, and to sit 
down along with them in entrenched defiance 
to all the threats and to all the preparations 
of an insulted empire, 0, how would the 
cry of wounded pride resound throughout all 
the ranks and varieties of our mighty popula- 
tion ; and this very movement of indignancy 
would reach the king upon his throne, and 
circulate among those who stood in all the 
grandeur of chieftainship around him, and be 
heard to thrill in the eloquence of parlia- 
ment, and spread so resistless an appeal to a 
nation's honor and a nation's patriotism, that 
the trumpet of war would summon to its call 
all the spirit and all the willing energies of 
our kingdom ; and rather than sit down in 
patient endurance under the burning disgrace 
of such a violation, would the whole of its 
strength and resources be embarked upon the 
contest ; and never, never would we let down 
our exertions and our sacrifices, till either our 
deluded countrymen were reclaimed, or till 
the whole of this offence were, by one righteous 
act of vengeance, swept away altogether from 
the face of the territory it deformed. 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 191 

The Bible is always most full and most 
explanatory on those points of revelation in 
which men are personally interested. But it 
does at times offer a dim transparency, 
through which may be caught a partial view 
of such designs and of such enterprises as 
are now afloat among the upper orders of in- 
telligence. It tells us of a mighty struggle 
that is now going on for a moral ascendency 
over the hearts of this world's population. 
It tells us that our race were seduced from 
their allegiance to God by the plotting sa- 
gacity of one who stands preeminent against 
him, among the hosts of a very wide and ex- 
tended rebellion. It tells us of the Captain 
of salvation, who undertook to spoil him of 
his triumph; and throughout the whole of 
that magnificent train of prophecy which 
points to Him, does it describe the work he 
had to do, as a conflict in which strength 
was to be put forth, and painful suffering to 
be endured, and fury to be poured upon ene- 
mies, and principalities to be dethroned, and 
all those toils and dangers and difficulties to 
be borne, which strewed the path of perse- 
verance that was to carry him to victory. 

But it is a contest of skill, as well as of 



192 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

strength and of influence. There is the ear- 
nest competition of angelic faculties em- 
barked on this struggle for ascendency. And 
while in the Bible there is recorded — faintly 
and partially, we admit — the deep and insid- 
ious policy that is practised on the one side, 
we are also told, that on the plan of our 
world's restoration, there are lavished all the 
riches of an unsearchable wisdom upon the 
other. It would appear that, for the accom- 
plishment of his purpose, the great enemy of 
G-od and of man plied his every calculation, 
and brought all the devices of his deep and 
settled malignity to bear upon our species ; 
and thought that could he involve us in sin, 
every attribute of the Divinity stood staked to 
the banishment of our race from beyond the 
limits of the empire , of righteousness ; and 
thus did he practise his invasions on the 
moral territory of the unfallen, and glorying 
in his success, did he fancy and feel that he 
had achieved a permanent separation between 
the God who sitteth in heaven, and one at 
least of the planetary mansions which he 
had reared. 

The errand of the Saviour was to restore 
this sinful world, and have its people read- 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 193 

initted within the circle of heaven's pure 
and righteous family. But in the govern- 
ment of heaven, as well as in the govern- 
ment of earth, there are certain principles 
which cannot be compromised, and certain 
maxims of adifiinistration which must never 
be departed from, and a certain character of 
majesty and of truth on which the taint 
even of the slightest violation can never be 
permitted, agid a certain authority which 
must be upheld by the immutability of all 
its sanctions, and the unerring fulfilment of 
all its wise and righteous proclamations. All 
this was in the mind of the archangel, and a 
gleam of malignant joy shot athwart him 
as he conceived his project for hemming our 
unfortunate species within the bound of an 
irrecoverable dilemma ; and as surely as sin 
and holiness could not enter into fellowship, 
so surely did he think, that if man were se- 
duced to disobedience, would the truth and 
the justice and the immutability of G-od lay 
their insurmountable barriers on the path of 
his future acceptance. 

It was only in that plan of recovery of 
which Jesus Christ was the author and the 
finisher, that the great adversary of our spe- 

Cbr Rev. 9 



194 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

cies met with a wisdom which overmatched 
him. It is true, that he had reared, in the 
guilt to which he seduced us, a mighty 
obstacle in the way of this lofty undertaking. 
But when the grand expedient was an- 
nounced, and the blood of that atonement 
by which sinners are brought nigh, was will- 
ingly offered to be shed for us, and the eter- 
nal Son, to carry this mystery into accom- 
plishment, assumed our nature, then was 
the prince of that mighty rebellion, in which 
the fate and the history of our world are so 
deeply implicated, in visible alarm for the 
safety of all his acquisitions : nor can the 
record of this wondrous history carry forward 
its narrative, without furnishing some tran- 
sient glimpses of a sublime and a superior 
warfare, in which, for the prize of a spiritual 
dominion over our species, we may dimly per- 
ceive the contest of loftiest talent, and all the 
designs of heaven in behalf of man, met at 
every point of their evolution by the coun- 
terworkings of a rival strength and a rival 
sagacity. 

"We there read of a struggle which the 
Captain of our salvation had to sustain, 
when the lustre of the Godhead lay obscured, 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 195 

and the strength of its omnipotence was mys- 
teriously weighed down under the infirmities 
of our nature — how Satan singled him out, 
and dared him to the combat of the wilder- 
ness — how all his wiles and all his influences 
were resisted — how he left, our Saviour in 
all the triumphs of unsubdued loyalty — how 
the progress of this mighty achievement is 
marked by the every character of a conflict — 
how many of the gospel miracles were so 
many direct infringements on the power and 
empire of a great spiritual rebellion — how in 
one precious season of gladness, among the 
few which brightened the dark career of our 
Saviour's humiliation, he rejoiced in spirit, 
and gave as the cause of it to his disciples, 
that " he saw Satan fall like lightning from 
heaven" — how the momentary advantages 
that were gotten over him, are ascribed to 
the agency of this infernal being, who en- 
tered the heart of Judas, and tempted the 
disciple to betray his Master and his Friend. 
I know that I am treading on the confines of 
mystery. I cannot tell what was the battle 
that he fought. I cannot compute the terror 
or the strength of his enemies. I cannot say, 
for I have not been told, how it was that they 



196 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

stood in marshalled and hideous array against 
him : nor can I measure how great the firm 
daring of his soul, when he tasted that cup 
in all its bitterness, which he prayed might 
pass away from him ; when, with the feeling 
that he was forsaken by his G-od, he trod the 
wine-press alone ; when he entered single- 
handed upon that dreary period of agony, and 
insult, and death, in which, from the garden 
to the cross, he had to bear the burden of a 
world's atonement. I cannot speak in my 
own language, but I can say, in the language 
of the Bible, of the days and the nights of 
this great enterprise, that it was the season of 
the travail of his soul ; that it was the hour 
and the power of darkness ; that the work of 
our redemption was a work accompanied by 
the effort, and the violence, and the fury of 
a combat — by all the arduousness of a battle 
in its progress, and all the glories of a vic- 
tory in its termination; and after he called 
out that it was finished — after he was 
loosed from the prison-house of the grave — 
after he had ascended up on high — he is said 
to have made captivity captive; and to 
have spoiled principalities and powers ; 
and to have seen his pleasure upon his en- 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 197 

emies, and to have made a show of them 
openly. 

I will not affect a wisdom above that 
which is written, by fancying such details of 
this warfare as the Bible has not laid before 
me. But surely it is no more than being wise 
up to that which is written, to assert, that in 
achieving the redemption of our world a war- 
fare had to be accomplished; that upon this 
subject there was, among the higher provinces 
of creation, the keen and the animated con- 
flict of opposing interests ; that the result of it 
involved something grander and more affect- 
ing than even the fate of this world's popula- 
tion; that it decided a question of rivalship 
between the righteous and everlasting Mon- 
arch of universal being, and the prince of a 
great and widely extended rebellion, of which 
I neither know how vast is the magnitude 
nor how important and diversified are the 
bearings: and thus do we gather, from this 
consideration, another distinct argument, help- 
ing us to explain why, on the salvation of 
our solitary species, so much attention appears 
to have been concentred, and so much energy 
appears to have been expended. 

But it would appear, from the records of 



198 ASTRONOMICAL DISGOUESES. 

inspiration, that the contest is not yet ended : 
that on the one hand the Spirit of God is 
employed in making, for the truths of Chris- 
tianity, a way into the human heart, with all 
the power of an effectual demonstration ; that 
on the other, there is a spirit now abroad, 
which worketh in the children of disobedi- 
ence : that on the one hand, the Holy G-host 
is calling men out of darkness into the mar- 
vellous light of the gospel ; and that on the 
other hand, he who is styled the god of this 
world, is blinding their hearts, lest the light 
of the glorious gospel of Christ should enter 
into them : that they who are under the do- 
minion of the one, are said to have overcome, 
because greater is he that is in them than he 
that is in the world ; and that they who are 
under the dominion of the other, are said to 
be the children of the devil, and to be under 
his snare, and to be taken captive by him at 
his will. How these respective powers do 
operate, is one question. The fact of their 
operation is another. We abstain from the 
former. We attach ourselves to the latter, 
and gather from it, that the" prince of dark- 
ness still walketh abroad among us ; that he 
is still working his insidious policy, if not 



ANGELIC CONTESTS EOR MAN. 199 

with the vigorous inspiration of hope, at least 
with the fanatic energies of despair ; that 
while the overtures of reconciliation are made 
to circulate through the world, he is plying 
all his devices to deafen and to extinguish 
the impression of them; or, in other words, 
while a process of invitation and of argument 
has emanated from heaven, for reclaiming 
men to their loyalty, the process is resisted at 
all its points, by one who is putting forth his 
every expedient, and wielding a mysterious 
ascendency, to seduce and to inthrall them. 

To an infidel ear, all this carries the 
sound of something wild and visionary along 
with it. But though only known through 
the medium of revelation, after it is known, 
who can fail to recognize its harmony with 
the great lineaments of human experience ? 
Who has not felt the workings of a rivalry 
within him, between the power of conscience 
and the power of temptation? Who does 
not remember those seasons of retirement, 
when the calcMlations of eternity had gotten 
a momentary command over the heart, and 
time, with all its interests and all its vexa- 
tions, had dwindled into insignificancy before 
them? And who does not remember how, 



200 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

upon his actual engagements with the objects 
of time, they resumed a control as great and 
as omnipotent as if all the importance of 
eternity adhered to them — how they emitted 
from them such an impression upon his feel- 
ings as to fix and to fascinate the whole man 
into a subserviency to their influence — how, 
in spite of every lesson of their worthlessness, 
brought home to him at every turn by the 
rapidity of the seasons, and the vicissitudes 
of life, and the ever-moving progress of his 
own earthly career, and the visible ravages 
of death among his acquaintances around 
him, and the desolations of his family, and 
the constant breaking up of his system of 
friendships, and the affecting spectacle of all 
that lives and is in motion withering and 
hastening to the grave — O, how comes it, 
that in the face of all this experience, the 
whole elevation of purpose conceived in the 
hour of his better understanding, should be 
dissipated and forgotten ? Whence the might 
and whence the mystery of that spell which 
so binds and so infatuates us to the world? 
What prompts us so to embark the whole 
strength of our eagerness and of our desires in 
pursuit of interests which we know a few little 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 201 

years will bring to utter annihilation ? Who 
is it that imparts to them all the charm and 
all the color of an unfading durability? 
Who is it that throws such an air of stability 
over these earthly tabernacles, as makes 
them look, to the fascinated eye of man, like 
resting-places for all eternity? Who is it 
that so pictures out the objects of sense, and 
so magnifies the range of their future enjoy- 
ment, and so dazzles the fond and deceived 
imagination, that in looking onward through 
our earthly career, it appears like the vista, 
or the perspective of innumerable ages ? He 
who is called the god of this world. He 
who can dress the idleness of its waking 
dreams in the garb of reality. He who can 
pour Sb seducing brilliancy over the panorama 
of its fleeting pleasures and its vain anticipa- 
tions. He who can turn it into an instru- 
ment of deceitfulness, and make it wield 
such an absolute ascendency over all the 
affections, that man, become the poor slave 
of its idolatries and its charms, puts the au- 
thority of conscience, and the warnings ol 
the word of God, and the offered instigations 
of the Spirit of Grod, and all the lessons of 

calculation, and all the wisdom even of his 

9* 



202 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

own sound and sober experience, away from 
him. 

But this wondrous contest will come to a 
close. Some will return to their loyalty, and 
others will keep by their rebellion; and, in 
the day of the winding up of the drama of 
this world's history, there will be made mani- 
fest to the myriads of the various orders of 
creation, both the mercy and vindicated maj- 
esty of the Eternal. Oh, on that day, how 
vain will this presumption of the infidel 
astronomy appear, when the affairs of men 
come to be examined in the presence of an 
innumerable company, and beings of loftiest 
nature are seen to crowd around the judg- 
ment-seat; and the Saviour shall appear in 
our sky with a celestial retinue, who have 
come with him from afar to witness all his 
doings, and to take a deep and solemn inter- 
est in all his dispensations ; and the destiny 
of our species, whom the infidel would thus 
detach, in solitary insignificance, from the 
universe altogether, shall be found to merge 
and to mingle with higher destinies: the 
good to spend their eternity with angels ; the 
bad to spend their eternity with evil angels — 
the former to be readmitted into the univer- 



ANGELIC CONTESTS FOR MAN. 203 

sal family of G-od's obedient worshippers ; the 
latter to share in the everlasting pain and 
ignominy of the defeated hosts of the rebel- 
lious — the people of this planet to be impli- 
cated, throughout the whole train of their 
never-ending history, with the higher ranks 
and the more extended tribes of intelligence. 
And thus it is, that the special administration 
we now live under shall be seen to harmonize 
in its bearings, and to accord in its magnifi- 
cence, with all that extent of nature and of 
her territories which modern science has un- 
folded. 



204 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 



DISCOURSE VII. 

ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND 
SENSIBILITr IN MATTERS OF RELIGION. 

"And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one 
that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument : 
for they hear thy words, but they do them not. — Ezek. 33 : 32. 

You easily understand how a taste for 
music is one thing, and a real submission to 
the influence of religion is another — how the 
ear may be regaled by the melody of sound, 
and the heart may utterly refuse the proper 
impression of the sense that is conveyed by 
it — how the sons and daughters of the world 
may, with their every affection devoted to its 
perishable vanities, inhale all the delights 
of enthusiasm, as they sit in crowded assem- 
blage around the deep and solemn oratorio; 
aye,' and whether it be the humility of pto- 
itential feeling, or the rapture of grateful 
acknowledgment, or the sublime of a con- 
templative piety, or the aspiration of pure 
and of holy purposes, which breathes through- 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 205 

out the words of tha performance, and gives 
to it all the spirit and all the expression by 
which it is pervaded, it is a very possible 
thing that the moral and the rational and 
the active man may have given no entrance 
into his bosom for any of these sentiments ; 
and yet so overpowered may he be by the 
charm of the vocal conveyance through which 
they are addressed to him, that he may be 
made to feel with such an emotion, and to 
weep with such a tenderness, and to kindle 
with such a transport, and to glow with such 
an elevation, as may one and all carry upon 
them the semblance of sacredness. 

But might not this semblance deceive 
him? Have you never heard any tell, and 
with complacency too, how powerfully his de- 
votion was awakened by an act of attendance 
on the oratorio— how his heart, melted and 
subdued by the influence of harmony, did 
homage to all the religion of which it was 
the vehicle — how he was so moved and over- 
borne that he had to shed the tears of contri- 
tion, and to be agitated by the terrors of 
judgment, and to receive an awe upon his 
spirit of the greatness and the majesty of 
God ; and that, wrought up to the lofty pitch 



206 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUESES. 

of eternity, he could look down upon the 
world, and by the glance of one commanding 
survey, pronounce upon the littleness and the 
vanity of all its concerns? 0, it is very, 
very possible that all this might thrill upon 
the ears of the man, and circulate a succession 
of solemn and affecting images around his 
fancy ; and yet, that essential principle of his 
nature upon which the practical influence of 
Christianity turns, might have met with no 
reaching and no subduing efficacy whatever 
to arouse it. He leaves the exhibition as 
dead in trespasses and sins as he came to it. 
Conscience has not wakened upon him. Re- 
pentance has not turned him. Faith has 
not made any positive lodgment within him 
of her great and her constraining realities. 
He speeds him back to his business and to 
his family, and there he plays off the old 
man in all the entireness of his uncrucified 
temper, and of his obstinate worldliness, and 
of all those earthly and unsatisfied affections 
which are found to cleave to him with as 
great tenacity as ever. He is really and ex- 
perimentally the very same man as before, and 
all those sensibilities which seemed to bear 
upon them so much of the air and unction 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 207 

of heaven, are found to go into dissipation, 
and be forgotten with the loveliness of the 
song. 

Amid all that illusion which such mo- 
mentary visitations of seriousness and of sen- 
timent throw around the character of man, 
let us never lose sight of the test, that ''by 
their fruits ye shall know them." It is not 
coming up to this test, that you hear and are 
delighted. It is that you hear and do. This 
is the ground upon which the reality of your 
religion is discriminated now ; and on the day 
of reckoning, this is the ground upon which 
your religion will be judged then, and that 
award is to be passed upon you which will 
fix and perpetuate your destiny for ever. You 
have a taste for music. This no more im- 
plies the hold and the ascendency of religion 
over you, than that you have a taste for beau- 
tiful scenery, or a taste for painting, or even 
a taste for the sensualities of epicurism. 
But music may be made to express the glow 
and the movement of devotional feeling ; and 
is it saying nothing, to say that the heart of 
him who listens with a raptured ear, is, 
through the whole time of the performance, 
in harmony with such a movement? Why, 



208 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

it is saying nothing to the purpose. Music 
may lift the inspiring note of patriotism, and 
the inspiration may be felt, and it may thrill 
over the recesses of the soul, to the mustering 
up of all its energies ; and it may sustain to 
the last cadence of the song, the firm nerve 
and purpose of intrepidity ; and all this may 
be realized upon him who, in the day of bat- 
tle, and upon actual collision with the dan- 
gers of it, turns out to be a coward. And 
music may lull the feelings into unison with 
piety, and stir up the inner man to lofty 
determinations, and so engage for a time his 
affections, that, as if weaned from the dust, 
they promise an immediate entrance on some 
great and elevated career which may carry 
him through his pilgrimage superior to all 
the sordid and grovelling enticements that 
abound in it. But he turns him to the 
world, and all this glow abandons him, and 
the words which he hath heard he doeth 
them not, and in the hour of temptation he 
turns out to be a deserter from the law of 
allegiance ; and the test I have now specified 
looks hard upon him, and discriminates him 
amid all the parading insignificance of his 
fine but fugitive emotions, to be the subject 



FUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 20Q 

both of present guilt and of future ven- 
geance. 

The faithful application of this test would 
put to flight a host of other delusions. It 
may be carried round among all those phe- 
nomena of human character, where there is 
the exhibition of something associated with 
religion, but which is not religion itself An 
exquisite relish for music is no test of the 
influence of Christianity. Neither are many 
other of the exquisite sensibilities of our na- 
ture. "When a kind mother closes the eyes 
of her expiring babe, she is thrown into a 
flood of sensibility, and soothing to her heart 
are the sympathy and the prayers of an at- 
tending minister. When a gathering neigh- 
borhood assemble to the funeral of an ac- 
quaintance, one pervading sense of regret and 
tenderness sits on the faces of the company, 
and the deep silence, broken only by the 
solemn utterance of the man of God, carries 
a kind of pleasing religiousness along with 
it. The sacredness of the hallowed day, 
and all the decencies of its observation, 
may engage the afiections of him who loves 
to walk in the footsteps of his father, and 
every recurring Sabbath may bring to his 



210 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

bosom the charm of its regularity and its 
quietness. Religion has its accompaniments, 
and in these there may be a something to 
soothe and to fascinate, even in the absence 
of the appropriate influences of religion. 
The deep and tender impression of a family 
bereavement is not religion. The love of 
established decencies is not religion. The 
charm of all that sentimentalism which is 
associated with many of its solemn and 
affecting services, is not religion. They may 
form the distinct folds of its accustomed dra- 
pery, but they do not, any or all of them put 
together, make up the substance of the thing 
itself. A mother's tenderness may flow most 
gracefully over the tomb of her departed 
little one, and she may talk the while of 
that heaven whither its spirit has ascended. 
The man whom death hath widowed of his 
friend, may abandon himself to the move- 
ments of that grief which for a time will 
claim an ascendency over him, and among 
the multitude of his other reveries, may love 
to hear of the eternity where sorrow and sep- 
aration are alike unknown. He who has 
been trained from his infant days to remem- 
ber the Sabbath, may love the holiness of its 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 211 

aspect, and associate himself with all its ob- 
servances, and take a delighted share in the 
mechanism of its forms. But let not these 
think, because the tastes and the sensibilities 
which engross them may be blended with 
religion, that they indicate either its strengtk 
or its existence within them. I recur to the 
test. I pr^ss its imperious exactions upon 
you. I call for fruit, and demand the perma- 
nency of a religious influence on the habits 
and the history. 0, how many take a flat- 
tering unction to their souls when they 
think of their amiable feelings and their 
becoming observations, with whom this se- 
vere touchstone would, like the head of Me- 
dusa, put to flight all their complacency. 
The afilictive dispensation is forgotten, and 
he on whom it was laid is practically as 
indifferent to God and to eternity as before. 
The Sabbath services come to a close, and 
they are followed by the same routine of 
week-day worldliness as before. In neither 
the one case nor the other do we see more of 
the radical influence of Christianity, than in 
the sublime and melting influence of sacred 
music upon the soul; and all this tide of 
emotion is found to die away from the 



212 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

bosom like the pathos or like the loveliness 
of a song. 

The instances may be multiplied without 
number. A man may have a taste for elo- 
quence ; and eloquence, the most touching or 
sublime, may lift her pleading voice on the 
side of religion. A man may love to have 
his understanding stimulated by the ingenui- 
ties or the resistless urgencies of an argu- 
ment; and argument the most profound 
and the most overbearing may put forth all 
the might of a constraining vehemence in 
behalf of religion. A man may feel the re- 
joicings of a conscious elevation when some 
ideal scene of magnificence is laid before 
him ; and where are these scenes so readily 
to be met with, as when led to expatiate 
in thought over the track of eternity, or to 
survey the wonders of creation, or to look to 
the magnitude of those great and universal 
interests which lie within the compass of re- 
ligion, A man may have his attention riv- 
eted and regaled by that power of imitative 
description which brings all the recollections 
of his own experience before him — which 
presents him with a faithful analysis of his 
own heart — which embodies in language such 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 213 

intimacies of observation and of feeling as 
have often passed before his eyes, or played 
within his bosom, but had never been so truly 
or so ably pictured to the view of his remem- 
brance. Now, all this may be done in the 
work of pressing the duties of religion — in 
the work of instancing the applications of 
religion — in the work of pointing those allu- 
sions to life and to manners which manifest 
the truth to the conscience, and plant such a 
conviction of sin as forms the very basis of a 
sinner's religion. Now, in all these cases, I 
see other principles brought into action, and 
which may be in a state of most lively and 
vigorous movement, and be yet in a state of 
entire separation from the principle of re- 
ligion. I will make bold to say, on the 
strength of these illustrations, that as much 
delight may emanate from the pulpit on an 
arrested audience beneath it, as ever emanat- 
ed from the boards of a theatre — aye, and 
with as total a disjunction of mind too, in 
the one case as in the other, from the es- 
sence or the habit of religion. I recur to the 
test. I make my appeal to experience, and I 
put it to you all, whether your finding upon 
the subject do not agree with my saying 



214 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

about it, that a man may weep, and admire, 
and have many of his faculties put upon the 
stretch of their most intense gratification — 
his judgment established, and his fancy enli- 
vened, and his feelings overpowered, and his 
hearing charmed as by the accents of heav- 
enly persuasion, and all within him feasted 
by the rich and varied luxuries of an intel- 
lectual banquet — 0, it is cruel to frown un- 
mannerly in the midst of so much satisfac- 
tion. But I must not forget that truth has 
her authority as well as her sternness ; and 
she forces me to affirm, that after all this has 
been felt and gone through, there might not 
be one principle which lies at the turning- 
point of conversion, that has experienced a 
single movement — not one of its purposes 
be conceived — ^not one of its doings be accom- 
plished — not one step of that repentance 
which if we have not, we perish, so much as 
entered upon — not one announcement of that 
faith by which we are saved, admitted into a 
real and actual possession by the inner man. 
He has had his hour's entertainment, and 
willingly does he award this homage to the 
performer, that he hath a pleasant voice and 
can play well on an instrument ; but in an- 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 215 

other hour it fleets away from his remem- 
brance, and goes all to nothing, like the love- 
liness of a song. 

Now, in bringing these Astronomical Dis- 
courses to a close, I feel it my duty to advert 
to this exhibition of character in man. The 
sublime and interesting topic which has 
engaged us, however feebly it may have 
been handled — however inadequately it may 
have been put in all its worth and all its 
magnitude before you — however short the 
representation of the speaker or the concep- 
tion of the hearers may have been of that 
richness, and that greatness, and that lofti- 
ness which belong to it — possesses in itself 
a charm to fix the attention, and to regale 
the imagination, and to subdue the whole 
man into a delighted reverence ; and, in a 
word, to beget such a solemnity of thought 
and of emotion, as may occupy and enlarge 
the soul for hours together — as may waft it 
away from the grossness of ordinary life, and 
raise it to a kind of elevated calm above all 
its vulgarities and all its vexations. 

Now, tell me whether the whole of this 
effect upon the feelings may not be formed 
without the presence of religion. Tell me 



216 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

whether there might not be such a constitu- 
tion of mind, that it may both want alto- 
gether that principle in virtue of which the 
doctrines of Christianity are admitted into 
the belief, and the duties of Christianity are 
admitted into a government over the practice; 
and yet, at the very same time, it may have 
the faculty of looking abroad over some scene 
of magnificence, and of being wrought up .to 
ecstasy with the sense of all those glories 
among which it is expatiating. I want you 
to see clearly the distinction between these 
two attributes of the human character. 
They are, in truth, as different the one from 
the other, as a taste for the grand and the 
graceful of scenery differs from the appetite 
of hunger ; and the one may both exist and 
have a most intense operation within the 
bosom of that very individual who entirely 
disowns and is entirely disgusted with 
the other. What, must a man be con- 
verted, ere from the most elevated peak 
of some Alpine wilderness he become ca- 
pable of feeling the force and the majesty 
of those great lineaments which the hand of 
nature has thrown around him in the varied 
forms of precipice, and mountain, and the 



FUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 217 

wave of mighty forests, and the rush of 
sounding waterfalls, and distant glimpses of 
human territory, and pinnacles of everlasting 
snow, and the sweep of that circling hori- 
zon which folds in its ample embrace the 
whole of this noble amphitheatre ? Tell me 
whether, without the aid of Christianity, or 
without a particle of reverence for the only 
name given under heaven whereby men can 
be saved, a man may not kindle at such a 
perspective as this, into all the raptures and 
into all the movements of a poetic elevation, 
and be able to render into the language of 
poetry the whole of that sublime and beau- 
teous imagery which adorns it; aye, and as 
if he were treading on the confines of a 
sanctuary which he has not entered, may he 
not mix up with the power and the en- 
chantment of his description, such allusions 
to the presiding genius of the scene, or to the 
still but animating spirit of the solitude, or 
to the speaking silence of some mysterious 
character which reigns throughout the land- 
scape, or, in fine, to that eternal Spirit who 
sits behind the elements he has formed, and 
combines them into all the varieties of a wide 
and a wondrous creation : might not all this 

Chr. Rev. lO 



218 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

"be said and sung with an empliasis so mov- 
ing as to spread the coloring of piety over 
the pages of him who performs thus well 
upon his instrument, and yet the performer 
himself have a conscience unmoved by a 
single warning of God's actual communica- 
tion, and the judgment unconvinced, and the 
fears unawakened, and the life unreformed 
by it? 

Now, what is true of a scene on earth, is 
also true of that wider and more elevated 
scene which stretches over the immensity 
around it into a dark and a distant unknown. 
Who does not feel an aggrandizement of 
thought and of faculty, when he looks 
abroad over the amplitudes of creation — 
when, placed on a telescopic eminence, his 
eye can find a pathway to innumerable 
worlds — when that wondrous field over 
which there had hung for many ages the 
mantle of so deep an obscurity, is laid open 
to him, and instead of a dreary and unpeo- 
pled solitude, he can see over the whole face 
of it such an extended garniture of rich and 
goodly habitations. Even the Atheist, who 
tells us that the universe is self-existent and 
indestructible — even he, who instead of see- 



FUTILITY OF MEEE TASTE. 219 

ing the traces of a manifold wisdom in its 
manifold varieties, sees nothing in them all 
but the exquisite structures and the lofty- 
dimensions of materialism — even he who 
would despoil creation of its God, cannot 
look upon its golden suns and their accom- 
panying systems, without the solemn impres- 
sion of a magnificence that fixes and over- 
powers him. Now, conceive such a belief 
of Grod as you all profess, to dawn upon his 
understanding. Let him become as one of 
yourselves, and so be put into the condition 
of rising from the sublime of matter to the 
sublime of mind. Let him now learn to 
subordinate the whole of this mechanism to 
the design and authority of a great presiding 
Intelligence, and reassembling all the mem- 
bers of the universe, however distant, into 
one family, let him mingle with his former 
conceptions of the grandeur which belonged 
to it, the conception of that eternal Spirit 
who sits enthroned on the immensity of his. 
own wonders, and embraces all that he has 
made within the ample scope of one great 
administration. Then will the images and 
the impressions of sublimity come in upon 
him from a new quarter. Then will another 



220 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

avenue be opened, through which a sense of 
grandeur may find its way into his soul, and 
have a mightier influence than ever to fill, 
and to elevate, and to expand it. Then will 
be established a new and a noble associa- 
tion, by the aid of which all that he for* 
merly looked upon as fair becomes more 
lovely, and all that he formerly looked upon 
as great becomes more magnificent. But 
will you believe me, that even with this ac- 
cession to his mind of ideas gathered from 
the contemplation of the Divinity — even 
with that pleasurable glow which steals over 
his imagination when he now thinks him of 
the majesty of G-od — even with as much of 
what you would call piety, as, I fear, is enough 
to soothe and to satisfy many of yourselves, 
and which stirs and kindles within you when 
you hear the goings forth of the Supreme set 
before you in the terms of a lofty representa- 
tion — even with all this, I say, there may be 
as wide a distance from the habit and the 
character of godliness, as if God was still 
atheistically disowned by him. Take the 
conduct of his life and the currency of his 
aff'ections, and you may see as little upon 
them of the stamp of loyalty to Grod, or of 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 221 

reverence for any one of his authenticated 
proclamations, as you may see in him who 
offers his poetic incense to the genii, or weeps 
enraptured over the visions of a beauteous 
mythology. The sublime of Deity has 
wrought up his soul to a pitch of conscious 
and pleasing elevation — and yet this no 
more argues ^the will of Deity to have a prac- 
tical authority over him, than does that tone 
of elevation which is caught by looking at 
the sublime of a naked materialism. The 
one and the other have their little hour of 
ascendency over him, and when he turns 
him to the rude and ordinary world, both 
vanish alike from his sensibilities, as does 
the loveliness of a song. 

To kindle and be elevated by a sense of 
the majesty of G-od, is one thing. It is to- 
tally another thing to feel a movement of 
obedience to the will of God, under the im- 
pression of his rightful authority over all the 
creatures whom he has formed, A man may 
have an imagination all alive to the former, 
while the latter never prompts him to one 
act of obedience — never leads him to com- 
pare his life with the requirements of the 
Lawgiver — never carries him from such a 



222 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

scrutiny as this, to the conviction of sin — 
never whispers such an accusation to the 
ear of his conscience, as causes him to 
mourn and to be in heaviness for the guilt 
of his hourly and habitual rebellion — never 
shuts him up to the conclusion of the need 
of a Saviour — never humbles him to acqui- 
escence in the doctrine of that revelation 
which comes to his door with such a host of 
evidence as even his own philosophy cannot 
bid away — never extorts a single believing 
prayer in the name of Christ, or points a 
single look, either of trust or of reverence, to 
his atonement — never stirs any effective 
movement of conversion, never sends an 
aspiring energy into his bosom after the aids 
of that Spirit who alone can waken him out 
of his lethargies, and by the anointing which 
remaineth, can rivet and substantiate in his 
practice those goodly emotions which have 
hitherto plied him with the deceitfulness of 
their momentary visits, and then capriciously 
abandoned him. 

The mere majesty of God's power and 
greatness, when offered to your notice, lays 
hold of one of the faculties within you. 
The holiness of God, with his righteous 



FUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 223 

claim of legislation, lays hold of another of 
these faculties. The difference between 
them is so great that the one may be en- 
grossed and interested to the full, while the 
other remains untouched, and in a state ot 
entire dormancy. Now, it is no matter what 
it be that ministers delight to the former of 
these two faculties; if the latter be not ar- 
rested and put on its proper exercise, you are 
making no approximation whatever to the 
right habit and character of religion. There 
are a thousand ways in which we may con- 
trive to regale your taste for that which is 
beauteous and majestic. It may find its 
gratification in the loveliness of a vale, or in 
the freer and bolder outlines of an upland 
situation, or in the terrors of a storm, or in 
the sublime contemplations of astronomy, 
or in the magnificent idea of a God who 
sends forth the wakefulness of his omniscient 
eye, and the vigor of his upholding hand, 
throughout all the realms of nature and of 
providence. The mere taste of the human 
mind may get its ample enjoyment in each 
and in all of these objects, or in a vivid rep- 
resentation of them; nor does it make any 
material difierence whether this representa- 



224 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

tion be addressed to you from the stanzas of 
a poem, or from the recitations of a theatre, 
or finally from the discourses and the demon- 
strations of a pulpit. And thus it is that 
still, on the impulse of the one principle only, 
people may come in gathering multitudes to 
the house of God, and share with eagerness in 
all the glow and bustle of a crowded attend- 
ance, and have their every eye directed to 
the speaker, and feel a responding move- 
ment in their bosom to his many appeals and 
his many arguments, and carry a solemn and 
overpowering impression of all the services 
away with them; and yet, throughout the 
whole of this seemly exhibition, not one ef- 
fectual knock may have been given at the 
door of conscience. The other principle may 
be as profoundly asleep as if hushed into the 
insensibility of death. There is a spirit of 
deep slumber, it would appear, which the 
music of no description, even though at- 
tuned to a theme so lofty as the greatness 
and majesty of the Godhead, can ever charm 
away. 0, it may have been a piece of pa- 
rading insignificance altogether — the minis- 
ter playing on his favorite instrument, and 
the people dissipating away their time on 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 225 

the charm and idle luxury of a theatrical 
emotion. 

The religion of taste is one thing; the 
religion of conscience is another. I recur to 
the test. "What is the plain and practical 
doing which ought to issue from the whole 
of our argument? If one lesson come more 
clearly or more authoritatively out of it than 
another, it is the supremacy of the Bible. If 
fitted to impress one movement rather than 
another, it is that movement of docility in 
virtue of which, man, with the feeling that 
he has all to learn, places himself in the atti- 
tude of a little child, before the book of the 
unsearchable Grod, who has deigned to break 
his silence, and to transmit, even to our age 
of the world, a faithful record of his own 
communication. What progress, then, are 
you making in this movement ? Are you, or 
are you not, like new-born babes, desiring 
the sincere milk of the word, that you may 
grow thereby? How are you coming on in 
the work of casting down your lofty imagi- 
nations ? With the modesty of true science, 
which is here at one with the humblest and 
most penitential feeling which Christianity 

can awaken, are you bending an eye of car- 
lo* 



226 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

nestness on the Bible, and appropriating its 
informations, and moulding your every con- 
viction to its doctrines and its testimonies? 
How long, I beseech you, has this been your 
habitual exercise ? By this time do you feel 
the darkness and the insufficiency of nature ? 
Have you found your way to the need of an 
atonement? Have you learned the might 
and the efficacy which are given to the prin- 
ciple of faith ? Have you longed with all 
your energies to realize it? Have you bro- 
ken loose from the obvious misdoings of 
your former history? Are you convinced of 
your total deficiency from the spiritual obedi- 
ence of the affections ? Have you read of 
the Holy G-host, by whom, renewed in the 
whole desire and character of your mind, you 
are led to run with alacrity in the way of 
the commandments? Have you turned to 
its practical use the important truth, that he 
is given, to the believing prayers of all who 
really want to be relieved from the power 
both of secret and of visible iniquity ? I de- 
mand something more than the homage you 
have rendered to the pleasantness of the 
voice that has been sounded in your hearing. 
What I have now to urge upon you is, the 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE 227 

bidding of the voice — to read, and to re- 
form, and to pray, and, in a word, to make 
your consistent step from the elevations of 
philosophy, to all those exercises, whether of 
doing or of believing, which mark the con- 
duct of the earnest, and the devoted, and the 
subdued, and the aspiring Christian. 

This brings under our view a most deep- 
ly interesting exhibition of human nature, 
which may often be witnessed among the 
cultivated orders of society. When a teacher 
of Christianity addresses himself to that 
principle of justice within us, in virtue of 
which we feel the authority of God to be a 
prerogative which righteously belongs to him, 
he is then speaking the appropriate language 
of religion, and is advancing its naked and 
appropriate claim over the obedience of man- 
kind. He is then urging that pertinent and 
powerful consideration, upon which alone he 
can ever hope to obtain the ascendency of a 
practical influence over the purposes and the 
conduct of human beings. It is only by in- 
sisting on the moral claim of Grod to a right 
of government over his creatures, that he can 
carry their loyal subordination to the will of 
God. Let him keep by this single argument, 



228 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

and urge it upon the conscience, and then, 
without any of the other accompaniments of 
what is called Christian oratory, he may 
bring convincingly home upon his hearers all 
the varieties of Christian doctrine. He may 
establish within their minds the dominion of 
all that is essential in the faith of the New 
Testament. He may, by carrying out this 
principle of God's authority into all its appli- 
cations, convince them of sin. He may lead 
them to compare the loftiness and spirituality 
of his law with the habitual obstinacy of 
their own worldly affections. He may awa- 
ken them to the need of a Saviour. He may 
urge them to a faithful and submissive peru- 
sal of God's own communication. He may 
thence press upon them the truth and the 
immutability of their Sovereign. He may 
work in their hearts an impression of thia 
emphatic saying, that God is not to be mock- 
ed — that his law must be upheld in all the 
significancy of its proclamations — and that 
either its severities must be discharged upon 
the guilty^ or in some other way an adequate 
provision be found for its outraged dignity, 
and its violated sanctions. Thus may he 
lead them to flee for refuge to the blood of 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 229 

the atonement. And he may further urge 
upon his hearers how, such is the enormity of 
sin, that it is not enough to have found an 
expiation for it — how its power and its exist- 
ence must be eradicated from the hearts of all 
who are to spend their eternity in the man- 
sions of the celestial — how, for this purpose, 
an expedient is made known to us in the 
New Testament — how a process must be de- 
scribed upon earth, to which there is given 
the appropriate name of sanctification — how, 
at the very commencement of every true 
course of discipleship, this process is entered 
upon with a purpose in the mind of forsak- 
ing all — how nothing short of a single de- 
votedness to the will of G-od will ever carry 
us forward through the successive stages of 
this holy and elevated career — how, to help 
the infirmities of our nature, the Spirit is 
ever in readiness to be given to those who 
ask it ; and that thus the life of every Chris- 
tian becomes a life of entire dedication to 
Him who died for us — a life of prayer and 
vigilance, and close dependence on the grace 
of God — and, as the infallible result of the 
plain but powerful and peculiar teaching 
of the Bible, a life of vigorous unwearied 



230 ASTHONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

activity in the doing of all the command- 
ments. 

Now, this I would call the essential busi- 
ness of Christianity. This is the truth as it 
is in Jesus, in its naked and unassociated 
simplicity. In the work of urging it, noth- 
ing more might have been done, than to pre- 
sent certain views, which may come with as 
great clearness and freshness, and take as 
full possession of the mind of a peasant as 
of the mind of a philosopher. There is a 
sense of God, and of the rightful allegiance 
that is due to him. There are plain and 
practical appeals to the conscience. There 
is a comparison of the state of the heart with 
the requirements of a law which proposes to 
take the heart under its obedience. There 
is the inward discernment of its coldness 
about God ; of its unconcern about the mat- 
ters of duty and of eternity ; of its devotion 
to the forbidden objects of sense ; of its con- 
stant tendency to nourish, within its own re- 
ceptacles, the very element and principle of 
rebellion, and in virtue of this, to send forth 
the stream of an hourly and accumulating dis- 
obedience over those doings of the outer man 
which make up his visible history in the 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 231 

world. There is such an earnest and over- 
powering impression of all this, as will fix 
a man down to the single object of deliver- 
ance — as will make him awake only to those 
realities which have a significant and sub- 
stantial bearing on the case that engrosses 
him — as will teach him to nauseate all the 
impertinences of tasteful and ambitious de- 
scription — as will attach him to the truth 
in its simplicity — as will fasten his every 
regard upon the Bible, where, if he persevere 
in the work of honest inquiry, he will soon 
be made to perceive the accordancy between 
its statements, and all those movements of 
fear, or guilt, or deeply felt necessity, or con- 
scious darkness, stupidity, and unconcern about 
the matters of salvation, which pass within 
his own bosom ; in a word, as will endear 
to him that plainness of speech by which his 
own experience is set evidently before him, 
and that plain phraseology of Scripture, which 
is best fitted to bring home to him the doc- 
trine of redemption, in all the truth and in 
all the preciousness of its applications. 

Now, the whole of this work may be go- 
ing on, and that too in the wisest and most 
effectual manner^ without so much as one par- 



232 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

tide of incense being offered to any of the 
subordinate principles of the human constitu- 
tion. There may be no fascinations of style. 
There may be no magnificence of description. 
There may be no poignancy of acute and 
irresistible argument. There may be a rivet- 
ed attention on the part of those whom the 
Spirit of &od hath awakened to seriousness 
about the plain and affecting realities of con- 
version. Their conscience may be stricken, 
and their appetite be excited for an actual 
settlement of mind on those points about 
which they feel restless and unconfirmed. 
Such as these are vastly too much engrossed 
with the exigencies of their condition to be 
repelled by the homeliness of unadorned truth. 
And thus it is, that while the loveliness of the 
song has done so little in helping on the influ- 
ences of the gospel, our men of simplicity 
and prayer have done so much for it. With 
a deep and earnest impression of the truth 
themselves, they have made manifest that 
truth to the consciences of others. Missiona- 
ries have gone forth with no other preparation 
than the simple word of the testimony; and 
thousands have owned its power, by being 
both the hearers of the word and the doers of 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 233 

it also. They have given us the experiment 
in a state of unmingled simplicity; and we 
learn from the success of their noble example, 
that without any one human expedient to 
charm the ear, the heart may, by the naked 
instrumentality of the word of G-od, urged 
with plainness on those who feel its deceit 
and its worthlessness, be charmed to an entire 
acquiescence in the revealed way of G-od, and 
have impressed upon it the genuine stamp 
and character of godliness. 

Could the sense of what is due to G-od be 
effectually stirred up within the human 
bosom, it would lead to a practical carrying 
of all the lessons of Christianity. Now, to 
awaken this moral sense, there are certain 
simple relations between the creature and the 
Creator, which must be clearly apprehended, 
and manifested with power unto the con- 
science. We believe, that however much 
philosophers may talk about the comparative 
ease of forming those conceptions which are 
simple, they will, if in good earnest after a 
right footing with G-od, soon discover in their 
own minds, all that darkness and incapacity 
about spiritual things, which are so broadly 
announced to us in the New Testament. And 



234 ASTRONOMICAL DISGOUHSES. 

0, it is a deeply interesting spectacle, to be- 
hold a man who can take a masterly and 
commanding survey over the field of some 
human speculation, who can clear his dis- 
criminated way through all the turns and 
ingenuities of some human argument, who by 
the march of a mighty and resistless demon- 
stration, can scale with assured footstep the 
sublimities of science, and from his firm 
stand on the eminence he has won, can de- 
scry some wondrous range of natural or in- 
tellectual truth spread out in subordination 
before him ; and yet this very man may, 
in reference to the moral and authoritative 
claims of the G-odhead, be in a state of utter 
apathy and blindness. All his attempts, 
either at the spiritual discernment, or the 
practical impression of this doctrine, may 
be arrested and bafiled by the weight of some 
great inexplicable impotency. A man of 
homely talents, and still homelier education, 
may see what he cannot see, and feel what 
he cannot feel ; and wise and prudent as he 
is, there may lie the barrier of an obstinate 
and impenetrable concealment, between his 
accomplished mind and those things which 
are revealed unto babes. 



PUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 235 

But while his mind is thus utterly devoid 
of what may be called the main or elemental 
principle of theology, he may have a far quick- 
er apprehension, and have his taste and his 
feelings much more powerfully interested, 
than the simple Christian who is beside him, 
by what may be called the circumstantials 
of theology. He can throw a wider and 
more rapid glance over the magnitudes of cre- 
ation. He can be more delicately alive to the 
beauties and the sublimities which abound in 
it. He can, when the idea of a presiding G-od 
is suggested to him, have a more kindling 
sense of his natural majesty, and be able, 
both in imagination and in words, to surround 
the throne of the Divinity by the blazonry of 
more great and splendid and elevating im- 
ages. And yet, with all those powers of con- 
ception which he does possess, he may not 
possess that on which practical Christianity 
hinges. The moral relation between him and 
God may neither be effectively perceived, 
nor faithfully proceeded on. Conscience may 
be in a state of the most entire dormancy, 
and the man be regaling himself with the 
magnificence of Grod, while he neither loves 
G-od, nor believes God, nor obeys God. 



236 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

And here I cannot but remark, how much 
effect and simplicity go together in the an- 
nals of Moravianism. The men of this truly- 
interesting denomination address themselves 
exclusively to that principle of our nature on 
which the proper influence of Christianity 
turns. Or, in other, words, they take up the 
subject of the gospel message, that message 
devised by Him who knew what was in man, 
and who therefore knew how to make the 
right and the suitable application to man. 
They urge the plain word of the testimony, 
and they pray for a blessing from on high; 
and that thick impalpable veil by which 
the god of this world blinds the hearts of 
men who believe not, lest the light of the 
glorious gospel of Christ should enter into 
them — that veil which no power of philoso- 
phy can draw aside, gives way to the dem- 
onstration of the Spirit; and thus it is that 
a clear perception of scriptural truth, and all 
the freshness and permanency of its moral 
influences, are to be met with among men 
who have just emerged from the rudest and 
the grossest barbarity. 0, when one looks at 
the number and the greatness of their achieve- 
ments — when he thinks of the change they 



FUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 237 

have made on materials so coarse and so un- 
promising — when he eyes the villages they 
have formed, and around the whole of that 
engaging perspective by which they have 
checkered and relieved the grim solitude of 
the desert, he witnesses the love, and listens 
to the piety of reclaimed savages ; who would 
not long to be in possession of the charm by 
which they have wrought this wondrous 
transformation? who would not willingly 
exchange for it all the parade of human 
eloquence, and all the confidence of human 
argument? and for the wisdom of winning 
souls, who is there that would not rejoice to 
throw the loveliness of the song, and all the 
insignificancy of its passing fascinations away 
from him ? 

And yet it is right that every cavil 
against Christianity should be met, and 
every argument for it be exhibited, and all 
the graces and sublimities of its doctrine 
be held out to their merited admiration. 
And if it be true, as it certainly is, that 
throughout the whole of this process, a man 
may be carried rejoicingly along, from the 
mere indulgence of his taste, and the mere 
play and exercise of his understanding, 



238 ASTPtONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

while conscience is untouched, and the su- 
premacy of moral claims upon the heart and 
the conduct is practically disowned by him, 
it is further right that this should be adverted 
to, and that such a melancholy unhinge- 
ment in the constitution of man should be 
fully laid open, and that he should be driven 
out of the seductive complacency which he 
is so apt to cherish, merely because he de- 
lights in the loveliness of the song; and 
that he should be urged, with the imperious- 
ness of a demand which still remains unsatis- 
fied, to turn him from the corrupt indifference 
of nature, and to become personally a relig- 
ious man; and that he should be assured 
how all the gratification he felt in listening 
to the word which respected the kingdom of 
God, will be of no avail unless that kingdom 
come to himself in power — ^that it will only 
go to heighten the perversity of his charac- 
ter — that it will not extenuate his real and 
practical ungodliness, but will serve most fear- 
fully to aggravate the condemnation of it. 

With a religion so argumentable as ours, 
it may be easy to gather out of it a feast for 
the human understanding. With a religion 
so magnificent as ours, it may be easy to 



FUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 239 

gather out of it a feast for the human imagi- 
nation. But with a religion so humbling 
and so strict and so spiritual, it is not easy to 
mortify the pride or to quell the strong enmi- 
ty of nature, or to arrest the currency of the 
affections, or to turn the constitutional hab- 
its, or to pour a new complexion over the 
moral history, or to stem the domineering 
influence of things seen and things sensible, 
or to invest faith with a practical suprem- 
acy, or to give its objects such a vivacity of 
influence as shall overpower the near and the 
hourly impressions that are ever emanating 
upon man from a seducing world. It is here 
that man feels himself treading upon the 
limit of his helplessness. It is here that he 
sees where the strength of nature ends, and 
the power of grace must either be put forth, 
or leave him to grope his darkling way with- 
out one inch of progress towards the life and 
the substance of Christianity. It is here that 
a barrier rises on the contemplation of the 
inquirer — the barrier of separation between 
the carnal and the spiritual, and on which 
he may idly waste the every energy which 
belongs to him, in the enterprise of sur- 
mounting it. It is here that, after having 



240 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

walked the round of nature's acquisitions, 
and lavished upon the truth all his ingenui- 
ties, and surveyed it in its every palpahle 
character of grace and majesty, he will still 
feel himself on a level with the simplest and 
most untutored of the species. He needs the 
power of a living manifestation. He needs 
the anointing which remaineth. He needs 
that which fixes and perpetuates a stable 
revolution upon the character, and in virtue 
of which he may be advanced from the state 
of one who hears and is delighted, to the 
state of one who hears and is a doer. 0, 
how strikingly is the experience even of vig- 
orous and accomplished nature at one on this 
point with the announcements of revelation, 
that to work this change, there must be the 
putting forth of a peculiar agency ; and that it 
is an agency which, withheld from the exer- 
cise of loftiest talent, is often brought down on 
an impressed audience through the humblest 
of all instrumentality, with the demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and with power. 

Think it not enough that you carry in 
your bosom an expanding sense of the mag- 
nificence of creation, but pray for a subdu- 
ing sense of the authority of the Creator. 



PUTILITY OF MEUE TASTE. 241 

Think it not enough, that with the justness 
of a philosophical discernment you have 
traced that boundary which hems in all the 
possibilities of human attainment, and have 
found that all beyond it is a dark and fath- 
omless unknown. But let this modesty of 
science be carried, as in consistency it ought, 
to the question of revelation, and let all the 
antipathies of nature be schooled to acquies- 
cence in the authentic testimonies of the 
Bible. Think it not enough, that you have 
looked with sensibility and wonder at the 
representation of God throned in immensity, 
yet combining with the vastness of his entire 
superintendence, a most thorough inspection 
into all the minute and countless diversities 
of existence. Think of your own heart as 
one of these diversities, and that he ponders 
all its tendencies, and has an eye upon all its 
movements, and marks all its waywardness, 
and, G-od of judgment as he is, records its 
every secret and its every sin in the book of 
his remembrance. Think it not enough, that 
you have been led to associate a grandeur 
with the salvation of the New Testament, 
when made to understand that it draws upon 
it the regards of an arrested universe. How 

Chr. Rev. J 1 



242 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

is it arresting your own mind? What has 
been the earnestness of your personal regards 
towards it? And tell me, if all its faith, and 
all its repentance, and all its holiness, are 
not disowned by you ? Think it not enough, 
that you have felt a sentimental charm 
when angels were pictured to your fancy as 
beckoning you to their mansions, and anx- 
iously looking to the every symptom of your 
grace and reformation. 0, be constrained by 
the power of all this tenderness, and yield 
yourselves up in a practical obedience to 
the call of the Lord God, merciful and gra- 
cious. Think it not enough, that you have 
shared for a moment in the deep and busy 
interest of that arduous conflict which is 
now going on for a moral ascendency over 
the species. Eemember that the conflict is for 
each of you individually, and let this alarm 
you into a watchfulness against the power 
of every temptation, and a cleaving depend- 
ence upon Him through whom alone you will 
be more than conquerors. Above all, forget 
not, that while you only hear and are de- 
lighted, you are still under nature's power- 
lessness and nature's condemnation, and that 
the foundation is not laid, the mighty and 



FUTILITY OF MERE TASTE. 243 

essential change is not accomplished, the 
transition from death mito life is not under- 
gone, the saving faith is not formed, nor the 
passage taken from darkness to the marvel- 
lous light of the gospel, till you are both 
hearers of the word and doers also. " For if 
any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, 
he is like unto a man beholding his natural 
face in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and 
goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth 
what manner of man he was." 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 



The writer of these Discourses has drawn up the following com- 
pilation of passages from Scripture, as serving to illustrate or to 
confirm the leading arguments which have been employed in each 
separate division of his subject. 

DISCOUESE I. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. Gen. 1:1. 

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and 
all the host of them. Gen. 2:1. 

Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is 
the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that there- 
in is. Deut. 10 : 14. 

There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who 
rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excel- 
lency on the sky. Deut. 33 : 26. 

And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, 
Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the 
cherubim, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all 
the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven 
and earth. 2 Kings 19 : 15. 

For all the gods of the people are idols ; but the 
Lord made the heavens. 1 Chron. 16 : 26. 

Thou, even thou, art Lord alone ; thou hast made 
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the 



246 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

earth., and all things that are therein, the seas, and all 
that is therein ; and thou preservest them all ; and 
the host of heaven worshippeth thee. Neh. 9 : 6. 

Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and tread- 
eth upon the waves of the sea ; which maketh Arctu- 
rus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south. Job 9 : 8, 9. 

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, 
and hangeth the earth upon nothing. Job 26 : 7. 

By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens. Job 
26:13. 

The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
firmament showeth his handiwork. PsA. 19 : 1. 

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made 
and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth 
PsA. 33 : 6. 

Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth 
and the heavens are the work of thy hands. PsA 
102:25. 

Who coverest thyself with light as with a gar- 
ment ; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain 
PsA. 104 : 2. 

He appointed the moon for seasons ; the sun know 
eth his going down. PsA. 104 : 19. 

Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven 
and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the 
Lord^s ; but the earth hath he given to the children 
of men. Psa. 115 : 15, 16. 

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven 
and earth. Psa. 121 : 2. 

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made 
heaven and earth. Psa. 124 : 8. 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 247 

The Lord that made heaven and earth bless thee 
out of Zion. PsA. 134 : 3. 

Which made heaven and earth, the sea, and all 
that therein is. PsA. 146 : 6. 

The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by- 
understanding hath he established the heavens. Prov. 
3:19. 

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of 
his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and 
comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and 
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a 
balance? Isa. 40:12. 

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, 
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that 
stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth 
them out as a tent to dwell in. Isa. 40 : 22. 

Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heav- 
ens, and stretched them out ; he that spread forth the 
earth, and that which cometh out of it ; he that giveth 
breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that 
walk therein. Isa. 42 : 6. 

Thus saith the Lord thy Eedeemer, and he that 
formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that mak- 
eth all things ; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone ; 
that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. Isa. 44 : 24. 

I have made the earth, and created man upon it : I, 
even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and 
all their host have I commanded. Isa. 45 : 12. 

For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens ; 
God himself that formed the earth and made it ; he 
hath established it, he created it not in vain, he form- 
ed it to be inhabited* Isa. 45 : 18, 



248 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

My hand also hath laid the foundation of the 
earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens ; 
when I call unto them, they stand up together. Isa. 
48 : 13. 

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath es- 
tablished the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched 
out the heavens by his discretion. JEik 10 : 12. 

Ah Lord God ! behold, thou hast made the heaven 
and the earth by thy great power and stretched out 
arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. Jer. 
32:17. 

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath es- 
tablished the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched 
out the heaven by his understanding. Jer. 51 : 15. 

It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and 
hath founded his troop in the earth ; he that calleth 
for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon 
the face of the earth : The Lord is his name. Amos 
9:6. 

We also are men of like passions with you, and 
preach unto you that ye should turn from these vani- 
ties unto the living God, which made heaven, and 
earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein. 
Acts 14: 15. 

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, 
whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom 
also he made the worlds. Heb. 1:2. 

Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the founda- 
tion of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of 
thy hands. Heb. 1 : 10. 

Through faith, we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God. Heb. 11 : 3. 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 249 

DISCOURSE II. 

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; 
but those things which are revealed belong unto us 
and to our children for ever, that we may do all the 
words of this law. Deut. 29 : 29. 

I would seek unto God, and unto God would I 
commit my cause ; which doeth great things and un- 
searchable ; maryellous things without number. Job 
5:8,9. 

Which doeth great things past finding out ; yea, 
and wonders without number. Job 9 : 10. 

Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou 
find out the Almighty unto perfection? Job 11 : 7. 

Hast thou heard the secret of God ? and dost thou 
restrain wisdom to thyself? Job 15 : 8. 

Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how little a 
portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power 
who can understand ? Job 26 : 14. 

Behold, God is great, and we know him not, nei- 
ther can the number of his years be searched out. 
Job 36 : 26. 

God thundereth marvellously with his voice ; 
great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. 
Job 37 : 5. 

Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : 
he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in 
plenty of justice. Job 37 : 23. 

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the greai 
waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Psa. 77 : 19. 

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised ; and 

his greatness is unsearchable. Psa. 145 : 3. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither 

11* 



250 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
thoughts. ISA. 55 : 8, 9. 

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and 
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. Matt. 18:3. 

Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise 
enter therein. Luke 18 : 17; 

the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God I how unsearchable are his judg- 
ments, and his ways past finding out I For who hath 
known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his 
counsellor? Rom. 11 : 33, 34. 

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among 
you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become 
a fool, that he may be wise. 1 Cor. 3 : 18. 

For if a man think himself to be something, when 
he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. Gal. 6 : 3. 

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy 
and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the 
rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Col. 
2:8. 

Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy 
trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppo- 
sitions of science falsely so called. 1 Tim. 6 : 20. 

DISCOURSE III. 

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, 
the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain 
thee ; how much less this house that I have builded? 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 251 

Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, 
and to his supplication, Lord my God, to hearken 
unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant 
prayeth before thee to-day : that thine eyes may be 
open toward this house night and day, even toward 
the place of which thou hast said. My name shall be 
there ; that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer 
which thy servant shall make toward this place. 1 
Kings 8 : 27-29. 

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth 
under the whole heaven. Job 28 : 24. 

For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
seeth all his goings. Job 34 : 21. 

Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto 
the lowly. Psa. 138 : 6. 

Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. 
Thou knowest. my ^downsitting and mine uprising; 
thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou com- 
passest my path and my lying down, and art acquaint- 
ed with all my ways. For there is not a word in my 
tongue, but lo, Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thy 
hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for 
me ; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall 
I go from thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy 
presence? Psa. 139:1-7. 

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O 
God! how great is the sum of them! If I should 
count them, they are more in number than the sand : 
when I awake, I am still with thee. Psa. 139 : 17, 18. 

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding 
the evil and the good. Prov. 15 : 3. 



252 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall 
not see him? saith the Lord : do not I fill heaven and 
earth? saith the Lord. Jer. 23 : 24. 

Behold the fowls of the air ; for they sow not, nei- 
ther do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your 
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much bet- 
ter than they ? And why take ye thought for raiment T 
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they 
toil not, neither do they spin : and yet I say unto you, 
that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed 
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the 
grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is 
cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 
ye of little faith? Matt. 6 : 26, 28-30. 

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 
Matt. 10 : 30. 

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest 
in his sight : but all things are naked and opened 
unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Heb. 
4:13. 

DISCOURSE IV. 

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on 
the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven ; and 
behold the angels of God ascending and descending 
on it. Gen. 28 : 12. 

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yes- 
terday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 
PsA. 90:4. 

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon 
the earth beneath : for the heavens shall vanish away 
like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a gar- 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 253 

ment, and tliey that dwell therein shall die in like 
manner ; but my salvation shall be for ever, and my 
righteousness shall not be abolished. Isa. 51 : 6. 

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his 
Father with his angels; and then he shall reward 
every man according to his works. Matt. 16 : 27. 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and 
all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon 
the throne of his glory. Matt. 25 : 31. 

Also I say unto you. Whosoever shall confess me 
before men, him shall the Son of man also confess 
before the angels of God ; but he that denieth me 
before men, shall be denied before the angels of God. 
Luke 12 : 8, 9. 

And he saith unto him. Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels 
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of 
man. John 1 : 51. 

We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to 
angels, and to men. 1 Cor. 4 : 9. 

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him a name which is above every name : that 
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things 
in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the 
earth ; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phil. 
2:9-11. 

When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heav- 
en with his mighty angels. 2 Thess. 1 : 7. 

And without controversy great is the mystery of 
godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, justified in 
the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, 



254 ASTUONOMICAL DISCOUUSES. 

believed on in the world, received up into glory. 1 
Tim. 3 : 16. 

I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these 
things. ITiM. 5:21. 

And again when he bringeth in the first-begotten 
into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God 
worship him. Heb. 1 : 6. 

But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the 
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
to an innumerable company of angels, to the general 
assembly and church of the first-born, which are writ- 
ten in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the 
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the 
mediator of the new covenant. Heb. 12 : 22-24. 

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, 
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not 
slack concerning his promise, as some men count 
slackness ; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not will- 
ing that any should perish, but that all should come 
to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come 
as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens 
shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements 
shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the 
works that are therein shall be burned up. 2 Peter 
3 : 8-10. 

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and 
upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware 
by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created 
heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth 
and the things that therein are, and the sea and the 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 255 

tilings wliich are therein, that there should be time no 
longer. Eey. 10 : 5, 6. 

And the third angel followed them, saying with 
a loud voice. If any man worship the beast and his 
image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his 
hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath 
of God, which is poured out without mixture into the 
cup of his indignation ; and he shall be tormented 
with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy 
angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. Rev. 
14:9, 10. 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat 
on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled 
away ; and there was found no place for them. Eey. 
20 : 11. 

DISCOURSE V. 

And Nathan departed unto his house. And the 
Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto 
David, and it was very sick. David therefore be- 
sought God for the child ; and David fasted, and 
went in and lay all night upon the earth. And the 
elders of his house arose and went to him, to raise 
him up from the earth ; but he would not, neither did 
he eat bread with them. And it came to pass on the 
seventh day, that the child died. And the servants 
of David feared to tell him that the child was dead ; 
for they said. Behold, while the child was yet alive, 
we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto 
our voice : how will he then vex himself, if we tell 
him that the child is dead? But when David saw 
that his servants whispered, David perceived that the 



256 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOUHSES. 

cliild was dead : therefore David said unto his ser- 
vants, Is the child dead ? And they said, He is dead. 
Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and 
anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came 
into the house of the Lord, and worshipped : then he 
came to his own house'; and when he required, they 
set bread before him, and he did eat. Then said his 
servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast 
done ? Thou didst fast and weep for the child, while 
it was alive ; but when the child was dead, thou didst 
rise and eat bread. And he said. While the child was 
yet alive, I fasted and wept ; for I said, Who can tell 
whether God will be gracious to me, that the child 
may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I 
fast ? can I bring him back again ? I shall go to him, 
but he shall not return to me. 2 Sam. 12 : 15-23. 

The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them 
that fear him, and delivereth them. Psa. 34 : T. 

For he shall give his angels charge' over thee, to 
keep thee in all thy ways. Psa. 91 : 11. 

And he shall send his angels with a great sound 
of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect 
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the 
other. Matt. 24 : 31. 

Likewise, I say unto you. There is joy in the pres- 
ence of the angels of God over one sinner that repent- 
eth. Luke 15 : 10. 

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? 
Heb. 1 : 14. 



SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 257 



DISCOURSE VI. 

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wil- 
derness, to be tempted of the devil. Matt. 4:1. 

The enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the har- 
vest is the end of the world ; and the reapers are the 
angels. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, 
and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things 
that offend, and them which do iniquity. Matt. 
13:39,41. 

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, 
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels. Matt. 25 :41. 

And in the synagogue there was a man which had 
a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud 
voice, saying, Let us alone ; what have we to do with 
thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy 
us ? I know thee who thou art : the Holy One of God. 
Luke 4 : 33, 34. 

Those by the way-side are they that hear ; then 
Cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of 
their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 
Luke 8 : 12. . 

But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them^ 
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to 
desolation ; and a house divided against a house, fall- 
eth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how 
shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast 
out devils through Beelzebub. Luke 11 : lY, 18. 

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of 
your father ye will do : he was a murderer from the 



258 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there 
is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speak- 
eth of his own : for he is a liar, and the father of it. 
John 8 : 44. 

And supper being ended, the devil having now 
put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to 
betray him. John 13 : 2. 

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled 
thy heart to lie to the Holy Q-host, and to keep back 
part of the price of the land? Acts 5 : 3. 

To open their eyes, and to turn them from dark- 
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, 
that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inherit- 
ance among them which are sanctified by faith that is 
in me. Acts 26 : 18. 

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under 
your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
be with you. Amen. EoM. 16 : 20. 

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us : for we 
are not ignorant of his devices. 2 Con. 2:11. 

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the 
minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the 
glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, 
should shine unto them. 2 CoR. 4 : 4. 

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the 
course of this world, according to the prince of the 
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the 
children of disobedience. Bph. 2 : 2. 

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be 
able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we 
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against prin- 
cipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the 



SCHIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 259 

darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places. Eph. 6 : 11, 12. 

For some are already turned aside after Satan. 
1 Tim. 5 : 15. 

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of 
flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of 
the same ; that through death he might destroy him 
that had the power of death, that is, the devil. Heb. 
2:14. 

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the 
devil, and he will flee from you. James 4 : Y. 

Be sober, be vigilant ; because your adversary the 
devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom 
he may devour : whom resist steadfast in the faith, 
knowing that the same aflBiictions are accomplished in 
your brethren that are in the world. 1 Pet. 6 : 8, 9. 

He that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the 
devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose 
the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy 
the works of the devil. 

In this the children of God are manifest, and the 
children of the devil : whosoever doeth not righteous- 
ness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his 
brother. 1 John 3 : 8, 10. 

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome 
them ; because greater is he that is in you, than he 
that is in the world. 1 John 4 : 4. 

And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in ever- 
lasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of 
the great day. Jude 6. 

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in 



260 ASTEONOMICAL DISCOUHSES 

wHte raiment ; and I will not blot out his name out 
of the book of life, but I will confess his name before 
my Father, and before his angels. Rey. 3 : 5. 

And there was war in heaven : Michael and his 
angels fought against the dragon ; and the dragon 
fought and his angels, and prevailed not: neither 
was their place found any more in heaven. And the 
great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the 
devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world : he 
was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast 
out with him. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye 
that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the 
earth and of the sea ! for the devil is come down unto 
you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he 
hath but a short time. Eev. 12.: 7-9, 12. 

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, 
which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thou- 
sand years. And when the thousand years are ex- 
pired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And 
the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake 
of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false 
prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night, 
for ever and ever. Rev. 20 : 2, 7, 10, 

DISCOURSE VII. 

Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of 
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
man, which built his house upon a rock : and the rain 
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : for it was 
founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth 



SCUIPTUHAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 261 

these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be 
likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon 
the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods 
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; 
and it fell: and great was the fall of it. Matt. 
7 : 24-27. 

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank 
thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
and hast revealed them unto babes. Matt. 11 : 25. 

Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and 
drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our 
streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not 
whence ye are : depart from me, all ye workers of 
iniquity. Luke 13 : 26, 27. 

For not the hearers of the law are just before 
God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. Rom. 
2:13. 

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not 
with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring 
unto you the testimony of God. For I determined 
not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ 
and him crucified. And my speech and my preach- 
ing was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but 
in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. That 
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but 
in the power of God. Now we have received not the 
spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God ; 
that we might know the things that are freely given 
to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in 
the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which 
the Holy Ghost teacheth ; comparing spiritual things 



262 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 

with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not 
the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolish- 
ness unto him: neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor. 2:1, 2, 4, 5, 
12-14. 

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with 
God. 1 Cor. 3 : 19. 

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in 
power. 1 Cor. 4 : 20. 

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the 
epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with 
ink, but with the Spirit of the living God ; not in 
tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. Not 
that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing 
as of ourselves ; but our sufficiency is of God ; who 
also hath made us able ^ministers of the new testa- 
ment ; not of the letter, but of the spirit : for the let- 
ter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 2 Cor. 3 : 3, 5, 6. 

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Fa- 
ther of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom 
and revelation in the knowledge of him : the eyes of 
your understanding being enlightened ; that ye may 
know what is the hope of his calling, and what the 
riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 
and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to 
us-ward who believe, according to the working of his 
mighty power. Eph. 1 : lY-19. 

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in 
trespasses and sins. For we are his workmanship, 
created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Eph. 
2:1,10. 

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, 



SCHIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 263 

but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in 
much assurance. 1 Thes. 1 : 5. 

Of his own will begat he us with the word of 
truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his 
creatures. 

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, 
deceiving yourselves. For if any be a hearer of the 
word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding 
his natural face in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, 
and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what 
manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the 
perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he 
being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, 
this man shall be blessed in his deed. James 1 : 18, 
22-25. 

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show 
forth the praises of him who hath called you out of 
darkness into his marvellous light. 1 Pet. 2 : 9. 

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and 
ye know all things. 

But the anointing which ye have received of him 
abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach 
you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all 
things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath 
taught you, ye shall abide in him. 1 John 2 : 20, 27. 



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