The Portland daily press., 1892-12-24

DdO no O0u w 1o 6stpES9SCS~
on the invisible arm of the Almighty,
declaring that she hangeth the earth
upon nothing" Whileall nations thought
the earth was level, the sky spread over
it like tent over a fiat surface, Isaiah
declared the world to be globular, cir
cular, saying of God, 'sHe sitteth upon
the circle of the earth" See them glitter
in the scriptural sky-Arcturus, Orion,
the Pleiades and the "Bear with her
young
While running your fingers among
the leaves of your Bible with the astro-
nomical thought in your mind, you see
two worlds stop-the sun and the MOON
But what does that Christian know
about that miracle who does not under
stand something Of those two lumina-
ries? Unless you watch modern astron-
omy put those two worlds in its steel
yards and weigh them you are as igno-
rant as Hottentot about the stupendous-
ness of that scene in the life of Joshua.
The sun over three hundred thousand
times as heavy as our earth and going
thousands of miles an hour. Think OF
stopping that and starting it again with
out the shipwreck of the universe! But
I can easily believe it. What confounds
me is not that he could stop and start
again those two worlds in Joshua's time,
but that he could have made the wheel
of worlds of which the sun and moon
are only cogs, and keep that wheel roll
ing for thousands of years-the fywheel
of all eternity.
If an engineer can start long train,
it is not surprising that he can stop it.
If God could make and move the uni
verse, which is an express train drawn
by an omnipotent engine, am not sur
prised that for part of day he could
put down the brakes on two pieces of
the rotating machinery. Infdelity Is
hard up for ground Of complaint against
the Scriptures when it finds fault with
that cessation of stellar and lunar travel.
Here is my watch. l could not make
watch if tried, but can stop it and
start it again.
My difficulty is not that God could
stop two worlds and start them again,
but that he could make them at all as he
did make them. What pleases me and
astounds me more is that each one of
the millions of worlds has God given
name. Only comparatively small num-
Der of them have names given them by
scientists. If astronomers can give a
name to whole constellation or galaxy
they think they do we'll, but God has a
name for each star in all immensity.
Inspired David declares of God, Gle
telleth the number of the stars; he call
eth them all by their Names"
They are not orphans that have never
been christened. They are not waits
of the night They are not unknown
ships on the high seas of immensity.
They belong to family of which God
is the Father, and as you call your chill
dren Benjamin or Mary or Bertha or
Addison or Josephine SO he calls all the
infant worlds and all the adult worlds
by their first name, and they know it as
well as though there were only one child
of light in all the divine family. 'sHe
calleth them all by their names," and
when he calls, I warrant they come.
Oh, the stars! Those vestal fires kept
burning on infinite affairs. Those light
houses on the coast of eternity. The
hands and weights and pendulum Of the
great clock of the universe. According
to Herschel, the so called fixed stars are
not fixed at all, but each one sun with
mighty system of worlds rolling round
it, and this whole system with all the
other systems rolling on around some
other great center-1nillions and mil
lions, billions and billions, trillions and
trillions, quadrillions and quadrilions!
THE INHABITED WORLDS.
But what gladdens me, and at the
same time overwhelms me, is that those
worlds are inhabited. The Bible says
SO, and what small idea you must
have of God and his dominion if you
think it only extends across this chip Of
a world which you and I now inhabit.
Have you taken this idea of all the other
worlds being inhabited as human guess
work? Read Isaiah, forty-6fth chap
ter, eighteenth verse, "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. formed it
to be inhabited" Now, if he inhabited
the earth so that it would not be created
in vain, would he make worlds hundreds
and thousands of times larger and not
have them inhabited? Speaking of the
inhabitants of this world, he says, 'The
nations are as the drop of a bucket
If all the inhabitants of this world are
as drop of a bucket, where are the other
drops Of the bucket? Again and again
the Bible speaks of the host of heaven,
and the word Ghost" means living crea-
lures, not inert masses, and the express
sion Ghosts of heaven" must mean in
habitants of other worlds. The psalm
ist cries out, 'sThy mercy is great above
| the heavens" If there We're no inhabi-
tants above the heavens, what use Of
| any mercy? Again, the Bible exclaims,
'sThy goodness is great above the heav-
ems" What could be the use of his
goodness above the heavens if there
were no inhabitants to enjoy it? Again,
the Bible says, "He has set thy glory
above the heavens" And here my text
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