Part 11

It is a very popular idea among modern astronomers that the stellar universe is an endless congeries of systems, of Suns and attendant worlds peopled with sentient beings analogous in the purpose and destiny of their existence to the inhabitants of this earth. This doctrine of a plurality of worlds, although it conveys the most magnificent ideas of the universe, is purely fanciful, and may be compared to the “dreams of the alchemists” who laboured with unheard of enthusiasm to discover the “philosopher’s stone,” the _elixir vitæ_, and the “universal solvent.” However grand the first two projects might have been in their realisation, it is known that they were never developed in a practical sense, and the latter idea of a solvent which would dissolve everything was suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed by the few remarks of a simple but critical observer, who demanded to know what service a substance would be to them which would dissolve all things? What could they keep it in? for it would dissolve every vessel wherein they sought to preserve it! This idea of a plurality of worlds is but a natural and reasonable conclusion drawn from the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity. But this doctrine being false its off shoot is equally so. The supposition that the heavenly bodies are Suns and inhabited worlds is demonstrably impossible in nature, and has no foundation whatever in Scripture. “In the beginning God created the Heaven and _the Earth_.” One Earth _only_ is created; and the fact is more especially described in Genesis, ch. i., v. 10. Where, instead of the word “Earth” meaning both land and water as together forming a globe, as it does in the Newtonian astronomy, only the _dry land_ was called _earth_,” and “the gathering together of the waters called He seas.” The Sun, Moon, and Stars are described as lights only and not worlds. A great number of passages might be quoted which prove that no other material world is ever in the slightest manner referred to by the sacred writers. The creation of the world; the origin of evil, and the fall of man; the plan of redemption by the death of Christ; the day of judgement, and the final consummation of all things are invariably associated with _this Earth alone_. The expression in Hebrews, ch. i., v. 2, “by whom also he made the _worlds_,” and in Heb., ch. ii., v. 3, “through faith we understand that the _worlds_ were framed,” are known to be a comparatively recent rendering from the original Greek documents. The word which has been translated _worlds_ is fully as capable of being rendered in the singular number as the plural; and previous to the introduction of the Copernican Astronomy was always translated “_the world_.” The Roman Catholic and the French Protestant Bibles still contain the singular number; and in a copy of an English Protestant Bible printed in the year 1608, the following translation is given:--“Through faith we understand that _the world_ was ordained.” So that either the plural expression “worlds” was used in later translations to accord with the astronomical notions then recently introduced, or it was meant to include the Earth and the spiritual world, as referred to in:--

_Hebrews_ ii., 5--“For unto angels hath he not put into subjection _the world to come_.”

_Ephesians_ i., 21--“Far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in _this world_, but also in _that which is to come_.”

_Luke_ xviii., 29, 30--“There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this _present time_, and in _the world to come_ life everlasting.”

_Matthew_ xii., 32--“Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in _this world_ neither in the _world to come_.”

The Scriptures teach that in the day of the Lord “the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat,” and the “stars of Heaven fall unto the Earth even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when shaken of a mighty wind.” The Newtonian system of astronomy declares that the stars and planets are mighty worlds--nearly all of them much larger than this Earth. The fixed stars are considered to be suns, equal to if not greater than our own sun, which is said to be above 800,000 miles in diameter. All this is proveably false, but to those who have been led to believe it, the difficult question arises,--“How can thousands of stars fall upon the Earth, which is many times less than any one of them?” How can the Earth with a supposed diameter of 8000 miles receive the numerous suns of the firmament many of which are said to be a million miles in diameter?

These stars are assumed to have positions so far from the Earth that the distance is almost inexpressible; figures indeed may be arranged on paper but in reading them no practical idea is conveyed to the mind. Many of them are said to be so distant that should they fall with the velocity of light or above one hundred and sixty thousand miles in a second, or six hundred millions of miles per hour, they would require nearly two millions of years to reach the Earth! Sir William Herschel in a paper on “The power of telescopes to penetrate into space,” published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for the year 1800, affirms, that with his powerful instruments he discovered brilliant luminaries so far from the Earth that the light from them “could not have been less than _one million nine hundred thousand years in its progress_.” Again the difficulty presents itself--“If the stars of Heaven begin to fall to-day, and with the greatest imaginable velocity, millions of years must elapse before they reach the Earth!” But the Scriptures declare that these changes shall occur suddenly--shall come, indeed, “as a thief in the night.”

The same theory, with its false and inconceivable distances and magnitudes, operates to destroy all the ordinary, common sense, and scripturally authorised chronology. Christian and Jewish commentators, unless astronomically educated, hold and teach that the Earth, as well as the Sun, Moon, and Stars, were created about 4,000 years before the birth of Christ, or less than 6,000 years before the present time. But if many of these luminaries are so distant that their light would require above a million of years to reach us; and if, as we are taught, bodies are visible to us because of the light which they reflect or radiate, then their light _has_ reached us, because we have been able to see them, and therefore they must have been shining, and must have been created at least _one million nine hundred thousand years ago_! The chronology of the bible indicates that a period of six thousand years has not yet elapsed since “the Heavens and the Earth were finished, and _all_ the Host of them.”

In the modern astronomy, Continents, Oceans, Seas, and Islands, are considered as together forming one vast Globe of 25,000 miles in circumference. This has been shown to be fallacious, and it is clearly contrary to the plain, literal teaching of the scriptures. In the first chapter of Genesis, we find the following language: “and God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered unto one place, and let the _dry land_ appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land _Earth_, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas.” Here the Earth and Seas--Earth and the great body of waters, are described as two distinct and independent regions, and not as together forming one Globe which astronomers call “the Earth.” This description is confirmed by several other passages of scripture.

2 _Peter_, iii., 5--“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the Word of God the Heavens were of old, and the Earth _standing out of the waters and in the waters_.”

_Psalms_ cxxxvi., 6--“O give thanks to the Lord of Lords, that by wisdom made the heavens, and that _stretchet out the earth above the waters_.”

_Psalms_ xxiv., 1, 2--“The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein: for he hath _founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods_.”

_Hermes_ (New Testament Apocrypha)--“Who with the word of his strength fixed the heaven; and _founded the earth upon the waters_.”

_Job_ xxvi., 7--“He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the Earth upon nothing.”

Some think that the latter part of this verse, “hangeth the Earth upon nothing,” favours the idea that the Earth is a globe revolving in space without visible support; but Dr. Adam Clark, although himself a Newtonian philosopher, says, in his commentary upon this passage in Job, the literal translation is, “on the hollow or empty waste,” and he quotes a Chaldee version of the passage which runs as follows: “He layeth the Earth upon the waters nothing sustaining it.”

It is not that He “hangeth the Earth upon nothing,” but “hangeth or layeth it upon the waters” which were empty or waste, and where before there was nothing. This is in strict accordance with the other expressions, that “the Earth was founded upon the waters,” &c., and also with the expression in Genesis, “that the face of the deep was covered only with darkness.”

If the Earth were a globe, it is evident that everywhere the water of its surface, the seas, lakes, oceans, and rivers, must be sustained the land, the Earth must be under the water; but if the land and the waters are distinct, and the Earth is “founded upon the seas,” then everywhere the sea must sustain the land as it does a ship or any other floating mass, and there is water below the earth. In this particular as in all the others, the scriptures are beautifully sequential and consistent:--

_Exodus_ xx, 4--“Thou shalt not make unto thee any likeness of anything in heaven above or in the Earth beneath, or in the _waters under the Earth_.”

_Genesis_ xliv, 25--“The Almighty shall bless thee with the blessings of heaven above, and blessings of the _deep that lieth under_.”

_Deut._ xxxiii, 13--“Blessed be his land, for the precious things of heaven; for the dew; and for the _deep which couched beneath_.”

_Deut._ iv, 18--“Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, and make no similitude of anything on the Earth, or the likeness of anything that is in the _waters beneath the Earth_.”

The same idea prevailed among the ancients generally. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Jupiter, in an assembly of the gods, is made to say, “I swear by the infernal _waves which glide under the Earth_.”

If the earth is a distinct structure standing in and upon the waters of the “great deep,” it follows that, unless it can be shown that something else sustains the waters, that the depth is fathomless. As there is no evidence whatever of anything existing underneath the “great deep,” and as in many parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans no bottom has been found by the most scientific and efficient means which human ingenuity could invent, we are forced to the conclusion that the depth is boundless. This conclusion is again confirmed by the scriptures.

_Jeremiah_ xxxi, 37--“Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar, the Lord of Hosts is His name. If these ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the Lord: if heaven above can be measured, and the _foundations_ of the _Earth searched out beneath_, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel.”

From the above it will be seen that God’s promises to his people could no more be broken than could the height of heaven, or the depths of the Earth’s foundations be searched out. The fathomless deep beneath--upon which the Earth is founded, and the infinitude of heaven above, are here given as emblems of the boundlessness of God’s power, and of the certainty that all his ordinances will be fulfilled. When God’s power can be limited, heaven above will no longer be infinite; and the mighty waters, the foundations of the earth may be fathomed. But the scriptures plainly teach us that the power and wisdom of God, the heights of Heaven, and the depths of the waters under the Earth are alike unfathomable; and no true philosophy ever avers, nor ever did nor ever can aver, a single fact to the contrary.

In all the religions of the Earth the words “up” and “above” are associated with a region of peace and happiness. Heaven is always spoken of as _above_ the _Earth_. The scriptures invariable convey the same idea:--

_Deut._ xxvi., 15--“Look _down_ from Thy holy habitation, from Heaven, and bless Thy people Israel.”

_Exodus_ xix., 20--“And the Lord came _down_ upon Mount Sinai.”

_Psalm_ cii., 19--“For he hath looked _down_ from the height of his sanctuary: from Heaven did the Lord behold the Earth.”

_Isaiah_ lxiii., 15--“Look _down_ from Heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and of Thy glory.”

_Psalm_ ciii., 11--“For as the Heaven is high _above the Earth_.”

2 _Kings_ ii., 11--“And Elijah went _up_ by a whirlwind into Heaven.”

_Mark_ xvi., 10--“So then after the Lord had spoken unto them he was received _up into Heaven_.”

_Luke_ xxiv., 51--“And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried _up into Heaven_.”

If the Earth is a globe revolving at the rate of above a thousand miles an hour all this language of scripture is necessarily fallacious. The terms “up” and “down,” and “above” and “below,” are words without meaning, at best are merely relative--indicative of no absolute or certain direction. That which is “up” at noon-day, is directly “down” at midnight. Heaven can only be spoken of as “above,” and the scriptures can only be read correctly for a single moment out of the twenty-four hours; for before the sentence “Heaven is high above the Earth” could be uttered, the speaker would be descending from the meridian where Heaven was above him, and his eye although unmoved would be fixed upon a point millions of miles away from his first position. Hence in all the ceremonials of religion, where the hands and eyes are raised upwards to Heaven, nay when Christ himself “lifted up his eyes to Heaven and said, Father, the hour is come,” his gaze would be sweeping along the firmament at rapidly varying angles, and with such incomprehensible velocity that a fixed point of observation, and a definite position, as indicating the seat or throne of “Him that sitteth in the Heavens” would be an impossibility.

Again: the religious world have always believed and meditated upon the word “Heaven” as representing an infinite region of joy and safety, of rest and happiness unspeakable; as “the place of God’s residence, the dwelling place of angels and the blessed; the true palace of God, entirely separated from the impurities and imperfections, the alterations and changes of the lower world; where He reigns in eternal peace. * * It is the sacred mansion of light, and joy, and glory.[45]” But if there is a plurality of worlds, millions upon millions, nay, an “infinity of worlds,” if the universe is filled with innumerable systems of burning suns, and rapidly revolving planets, intermingled with rushing comets and whirling satellites, all dashing and sweeping through space in directions, and with velocities surpassing all human comprehension, and terrible even to contemplate, where is the place of rest and safety? Where is the true and unchangeable “palace of God?” In what direction is Heaven to be found? Where is the liberated human soul to find its home--its refuge from change and motion, from uncertainty and danger? Is it to wander for ever in a labyrinth of rolling worlds? To struggle for ever in a never ending maze of revolving suns and systems? To be never at rest, but for ever seeking to avoid some vortex of attraction--some whirlpool of gravitation? The belief in the existence of Heaven, as a region of peace and harmony “extending (above the Earth) through all extent,” and beyond the influence of natural laws and restless elements, is jeopardised, if not destroyed, by a false and usurping astronomy, which has no better foundation than human conceit and presumption. If this ill-founded, unsupported philosophy is admitted by the religious mind, it can no longer say that--

“Far above the sun, and stars, and skies, In realms of endless light and love, My Father’s mansion lies.”

[45] Cruden’s Concordance, article “Heaven.”

The modern theoretical astronomy affirms that the Moon is a solid opaque, non-luminous body; that it is, in fact, nothing less than a material world. It has even been mapped out into continents, islands, seas, lakes, volcanoes, &c., &c. The nature of its atmosphere and character of its productions and possible inhabitants have been discussed with as much freedom as though our philosophers were quite as familiar with it as they are with the different objects and localities upon Earth. The light, too, with which the Moon so beautifully illuminates the firmament is declared to be only borrowed--to be only the light of the Sun intercepted and reflected upon the Earth. These doctrines are not only opposed by a formidable array of well-ascertained facts (as given in previous sections), but they are totally denied by the scriptures. The Sun and Moon and Stars are never referred to as worlds, but simply as _lights_ to rule alternately in the firmament.

_Genesis_ i., 14, 16--“And God said let there be _lights_ in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night. * * * And God made two _great lights_--the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.”

_Psalm_ cxxxvi., 7, 9--“O give thanks to Him that made _great lights_: the Sun to rule by day, the Moon and Stars to rule by night.”

_Jeremiah_, xxxi., 35--“The Sun is given for a light by day, and the ordinances of the Moon and of the Stars for a light by night.”

_Ezekiel_, xxxii., 7, 8--“I will cover the Sun with a cloud; and the Moon shall not give _her light_.” “All the bright lights of Heaven will I make dark over thee.”

_Psalm_ cxlviii., 3--“Praise him Sun and Moon, praise him all ye Stars of light.”

_Isaiah_ xiii., 10--“The Sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the Moon shall not cause _her_ light to shine.”

_Matthew_ xxiv., 29--“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the Sun be darkened, and the Moon shall not give her light.”

_Isaiah_ ix., 19, 20--“The Sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the _Moon give light_ unto thee. * * Thy Sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy Moon withdraw itself.”

_Psalm_ cxxxvi., 7 to 9--“To him that made great lights, the Sun to rule by day, the Moon and Stars to rule by night.”

_Job_ xxv., 5--“Behold even to the Moon, and _it_ shineth not.”

_Ecclesiastes_ xii., 2--“While the Sun, or the light, or the Moon, or the Stars be not darkened.”

_Isaiah_ xxx., 26--“The light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun; and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold.”

_Deuteronomy_ xxxiii., 14--“And for the precious fruits brought forth by the Sun, and for the precious things put forth by the Moon.”

In the very first of the passages above quoted the doctrine is enunciated that various distinct and independent _lights_ were created. But that two _great_ lights were specially called into existence for the purpose of ruling the day and the night. The Sun and the Moon are declared to be these great and alternately ruling lights. Nothing is here said, nor is it in any other part of scripture said, that the Sun is a great light, and that the Moon shines only by reflection. The Sun is called the “greater light to rule the day,” and the Moon the “lesser light to rule the night.” Although of these two “great lights” one is less than the other, each is declared to shine with its own light. Hence in Deuteronomy, c. 33, v. 14, it is affirmed that certain fruits are specially brought forth by the influence of the Sun’s light, and that certain other productions are “put forth by the Moon.” That the light of the sun is influential in encouraging the growth of certain natural products; and that the light of the Moon has a distinct influence in promoting the increase of certain other natural substances, is a matter well known to those who are familiar with horticultural and agricultural phenomena; and it is abundantly proved by chemical evidence that the two lights are distinct in character and in action upon various elements. This distinction is beautifully preserved throughout the sacred scriptures. In no single instance are the two lights confounded. On the contrary, in the New Testament, St. Paul affirms with authority, that “there is one glory of the Sun, and another glory of the Moon, and another glory of the Stars.”

The same fact of the difference in the two lights, and their independence of each other is maintained in the scriptures to the last. “The Sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the Moon became as blood.” If the Moon is only a reflector, the moment the Sun becomes black her surface will be blackened also, and not remain as blood, while the Sun is dark and black as sackcloth of hair!

Again: the modern system of astronomy teaches that this earth cannot possibly receive light from the Stars, because of their supposed great distance from it: that the fixed Stars are only burning spheres, or Sun’s to their own systems of planets and satellites: and that their light terminates, or no longer produces an active luminosity at the distance of nearly two thousand millions of miles. Here again the scriptures affirm the contrary doctrine.

_Genesis_ i., 16-17--“He made the Stars also; and God set them in the firmament _to give light upon the earth_.”

_Isaiah_ xiii., 10--“For the Stars of Heaven and the constellations thereof shall not _give their light_.”

_Ezekiel_ xxxii., 7--“I will cover the Heaven, and make the _Stars_ thereof _dark_.”

_Joel_ ii., 10--“The Sun and the Moon shall be dark, and the _Stars_ shall withdraw _their shining_.”

_Psalm_ cxlviii., 3--“Praise him Sun and Moon: promise him all ye _Stars of Light_.”

_Jeremiah_ xxxi., 35--“Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the Sun for a light by day; and the ordinances of the Moon and of _the Stars_ for a _light by night_.”

_Daniel_ xii., 3--“They that turn many to righteousness shall _shine_ as the _Stars_ for ever and ever.”

These quotations place it beyond doubt that the Stars were made expressly to shine in the firmament, and “to give light upon the Earth.” In addition to this language of scripture, we have the evidence of our own eyes that the Stars give abundant light. “What beautiful star-light!” is a common expression: and we all remember the difference between a dark and starless night, and one when the firmament is as it were studded with brilliant luminaries. Travellers inform us that in many parts of the world, where the sky is clear and free from clouds and vapours for weeks together, the Stars appear both larger and brighter than they do in England; and that their light is sufficiently intense to enable them to read and write, and to travel with safety through the most dangerous places.