The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1870-12-27 00:00:00

" Well might the Sun in darkness hide,
And Shut his glories in,
When God the Mighty Maker died
For man, the creature's, sin."

God has in fact shown, without disarranging the
glorious harmony of His works, first, that there arc
depths of wonder beyond our knowledge; and second-
ly, that the laws on the discovery of which men boast
themselves are under control. There is a God above
nature; • Lawgiver preceding and giving life to
Law.

It is a great mistake also to suppose that the order
and constancy of nature are being noticed in these
modern days for the first time. Nearly 3000 years
ago, a careful observer of nature, a king, a poet, and a
prophet,sang thus of the phenomena we are con-
sidering :—" For ever, 0 Lord, Thy word is settled
in heaven, Thy faithfulness is unto all generations.
Thou hut established the earth and it abideth ; they
continue this day according to Thine ordinances, for
all are Thy servants." See the different conclusions
come to by unbelief and faith from exactly the same
data. The everlasting heavens spangled with stars.
on which gazed the eyes of earth's first inhabitants—
the firm round earth still the same, though the lights
and shadows of the fleeting seasons pass over her,
though storms bathe and earthquakes momentarily
move her, yet essentially the same; these constant
heavens and earth, gar.ed at by the unbeliever and
believer alike, call forth from the one the dreary con-
clusion, nature is an automaton, there is no God;
from the other, the rational argument, "all are Thy
servants."

As God is the God of order and not of confusion,
the order of nature is a double proof, first of God's
existence, and secondly that nature is from God.
But there are solemn thoughts connected with this
subject. How is it, I would ask, that these objectors
who make so soscli of the calculation and prediction
of an eclipse, set so little weight by the fulfilled pro-
phesies of the Bible? Are they aware that if they
cast no discredit on the calculations as to any former
eclipse, and their subsequent verification, they have at
least as little ground for disbelieving the prophecies of
Isaiah and Daniel, and their subsequent fulfilment,.
It may be a triumph of science at the opening of each
year, to foretell the eclipses which will occur during its
course • it was something beyond the reach of science
to predict 700 years before the event, the life, suffer-
ings, death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.
Daniel's prophecies began to be fulfilled about 70 years
after their delivery, and they continued to be verified
over a period of about no years ; the minute
agreement between the event and prediction leading
rationalists in despair to resort to the miserable subter-
fuge that the event preceded the prophecy. That
can no more be said than that because the eclipse began
as we saw and ended exactly as foretold, therefore the
eclipse preceded the calculation of astronomers. The
marYel bf fulfilled prophecy is infinitely greater than
that of verified eclipses; and unfulfilled prophecy
will be fulfilled yet CILOre surely than predicted eclipses
will take place. Ask the prdoundestm.uhematician ;
ask rather the &cutest statesman, whose is this depart-
merit of calculating skill, what is going on at this mo-
ment the other side of the globe; or what will trans-
pire this day next year; and what can he give you
more than a shrewd gams, utterly out of comparison
with the infallible calculations of celestial mathema-
tics? And if they reply that these events are governed
by no laws but human caprice; I rejoin that this is
begging the question; and even were it so, man ought
surely to know more about such events than about
eclipses. But in truth, the only men who have ever
confidently predicted the future, are men like Isaiah
and Daniel, the amanuenses of God's Holy Spirit.
All indeed that astronomers know, all the data from
which scoffers have argued for the unchanginbleness
of all things, and the sufficiency of law to be God,
consists in this, that God has put into our hand the
pieces forming a small part of the purale of His Uni-
verse, the skilful put them together, and find they
agree with the map of phenomena—this is all.
Our knoledge is limited. Those majestic stars
and planets may have histories, not so sad and con-
fused indeed as ours, but yet complicated and utterly
beyond our knowledge or calculation. To quote Sir
John Herschers words—" There must be many of
the fixed stars revealed now by telescopes whose
light has taken at least moo years to reach us,and when ,
we observe their places and note their changes, they
may have ceased to exist moo years. Nor can their
dimensions be less wonderful than their distances, if '
Sirius be nearly equal to £4 suns, and there are others
to surpass Sirius ; yet all of them must be as nothing I
in the immensity of space, Lllll amidst the numbers
without number that may never become visible here, I
though they were created ix Me betinnimg."
But further, is there a sure and undeviating con-
nection between cause and effect in the course of I
Nature? If earth, moon, and sun are in a particular
relative position, must an eclipse follow? Far more
• sure is the connection between sin and death ;—be-
tween faith and life ; far more certain is it that sin
' hides God's countenance from the sinner; and that
the "blood of Jesus Christ, God's son," cleansing
from all sin, causes that eclipse to pass by, and lets in
the light of heaven on the soul. Notice again, that
a very little thing may dim our view of God and of
heaven. The moon which by coming between our
line of sight and the WA can, under certain circuits-
s.ances, entirely obscure its rays, causing total eclipse,
is nearly seventy saillion times smaller than that mighty
Sun. Compared with the earth it is little enough,
being some 49 times smaller, but if laid side by side
with the sun, it would be inconceivably small, a speck,
invisible in his glory. Yet this speck, this tiny
moon, by its nearness to us, and our distance from
the sun, actually shots out for a while, the whole blaze
of that enormous orb. Is not this strikingly suggestive
of man's spiritual history? Is the great sun that
"Slowly lifts
His golden feet on those empurpled stairs
That climb into the windy halls of heaven"

suck a type of majesty that not a few in ignorance
have worshipped it? What must He then be, the
" Father of lights," who has lit innumerable such
in the deep lilac distances of boundless space I The
little moon dares hide the glory of the sun—but ask
Murseves what hides Gad from my sours sight and
leand desire Something inconceivably small.
What is it? A lust, near to me, and I, when I
yiekled to it, far from God. And when it came,
and I yielded over and over again, say, was there
light and heavenly
of in the soul? Is it the love
of money, of ease, fame? Is it the love of man,
of woman, or child? Is it the pride of intellect, or